


Feels Just Like Home

by MPantrochilles



Series: Small, and a little bit broken [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Just all the avengers really, Kid Fic, M/M, Panic Attacks, Steve and Bucky keep (accidentally) adopting children, lots of fluff, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-01 18:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11492430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MPantrochilles/pseuds/MPantrochilles
Summary: Part 2 of 'Finding Nina'"He’d yelled when he felt his ankle twist, and again when he felt his arm pop out of place- she was screaming at him, but he hadn’t been paying attention because-Because Captain fucking America and the Winter fucking Soldier were running his way. He was pretty sure he’d hit his head and was hallucinating something insane, because there was the Captain, asking if he could hear him and what his name was and whether he could take a look at his injuries as the Winter Soldier looked on behind him, just standing there being threatening."It's not like Bucky and Steve were actively looking to find another kid- it just sort of happened.





	1. Date Night

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so this is part 2 of 'small, and a little broken'- I hope you enjoy it! Let me know in the comments :)

Bucky loved September evenings, where the sun bleached the sky orange to match the turning leaves in the early evenings, but it wasn’t too cold to enjoy being outside. He had Steve’s left hand in his right, and he could feel the pressure of their engagement rings being pushed together as he intertwined their fingers.

“I forget how quiet it can be,” Steve said, though whether the comment was meant for Bucky’s ears or not, he was unsure. They’d decided to take a walk, after dinner, around Brooklyn and the places they used to go. Steve’s home was long gone, but they visited the neighbourhood all the same, and then walked further. They did this on their date nights, just taking a general moment to explore. Natasha had insisted that they left the apartment for time to themselves, once in a while, and at first, they hadn’t enjoyed the idea of leaving Nina- if they were going places, she should be with them, to explore the world with them, because for all of them, it was new to one degree or another. They’d caved when Nina had asked to go to Danny’s for a sleepover, three weeks into their first semester of first grade. Natasha had kicked them out of the apartment to stop them from going insane worrying about her- even though she’d be perfectly fine, and Danny’s mom had _promised_ to call if they needed anything, and thus, date night was born for them.

They made sure to have Danny over a lot, as a thank you but also because he was quickly becoming Nina’s best friend, and to make Makayla’s life easier so she didn’t have to pay for babysitters and could spend some time to herself. (They may or may not have bought her a spa day for her birthday, and there may or may not have been something very close to an argument as she tried to insist she couldn’t take their gift, until they repeatedly told her it was not a pity gift but she was their _friend_ and they were allowed to do nice things for their friends. Natasha had been proud they’d made a friend outside of the Avengers- it was good for them. Tony was a little miffed, until Nina so kindly pointed out that they were _more than friends, we’re family, Uncle Tony, don’t be so silly!_ )

If they found anywhere amazing, they always made sure to bring Nina back- all the waiters and waitresses in the diner where Michael used to work knew the three of them by name. They took her to the park they used to play in, and the art museums that Steve loved so much. They took her to the fairs over the summer, and ate candy floss and went on every ride and played every game Nina wanted.

_“I always wanted to do this with you,” Bucky told Steve the evening they went to the fair alone. “I wanted to come with you, without the girls, and take you on a proper date like now, win you a stuffed bear and all that crap.”_

_“I’m glad my fiancé thinks being sweet is crap,” Steve teased, and Bucky poked his side. He couldn’t help but grin when Steve said ‘fiancé’._

_“Did I ever tell you that you look like a million bucks tonight? Like the best thing I ever laid eyes on?”_

_“Real smooth tryna butter me up like that, Buck, truly. Real swell.”_

_“What can I say? Anything for you, doll.” Steve had rolled his eyes at him then, and kissed him. Steve wondered if kissing Bucky would always feel like the first time- too much and too hot and just perfect._

At first, Bucky didn’t recognised the neighbourhood they’d wondered into, he’d been so wrapped up in his thoughts and the comfortable quiet that came with just walking with someone you had known your whole life- never silence, though, with Steve’s intermittent humming and occasional conversation.

“Hey Stevie?”

Steve made a small hum of acknowledgment, still very much wrapped up in his own thoughts, as he often got.

“This used to be a nice neighbourhood, didn’t it?” Bucky asked, and stopped walking. He was pretty sure his memory was right, but it was fuzzy around the edges, like an out of focus camera. Sometimes, he just needed the clarification. Steve stopped as abruptly as he did, and blinked back into focus, looking at Bucky and then at his surroundings. The houses were old, and not well maintained, with chipping paint and poorly done touch ups. Every pavestone was cracked, and there were those post-war flats like concrete boxes at the end of the street. A couple of windows were boarded up on a fair few of the houses.

“It was, once. Not as nice as it could have been, if they bothered to put any money into it, but nice enough. Seemed they never put any money into it.”

“It’s a real shame-” Bucky started, but then he heard a shout.

“Did you-” Steve said, his shoulders suddenly very tense. There was a scream.

“Round the corner, you take the right, I’ll take the left,” Bucky ground out, and they ran. Nobody else seemed bothered by the noise their neighbours were making. As Bucky and Steve rounded the corner, they realised they didn’t need to split up. Maybe thirty feet away from them, a kid had been pushed to the floor, and there was a woman screaming at them. None of the neighbours were interfering, just a couple thinking they were being stealthy as they spied the scene through the crack in the curtains. Bucky wanted to slap them.

Steve was running ahead, and as Bucky got closer he could make out that the kid, the boy, was about sixteen. His hair was covering most of his face, reaching down to his shoulders. He was in pyjamas, old pyjamas that barely reached his ankles, and had one shoe on. The woman was still yelling at him from the top of the stairs up to the building entrance. 

“AND YOU CAN STAY OUTTA MY HOUSE, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHIT!”

The kid was holding his arm close to his chest, and it was at an odd angle. She’d pushed him down the stairs. As Bucky gets closer, he realises there are bruises blooming across the kids face and arms, and his ankle is swelling up fast.

He spotted Bucky and Steve, and was looking at them like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing- Bucky wondered if he’d hit his head on the way down the stairs, whether he’d recognised them or was just shocked to be getting help. Steve was crouched next to him in a matter of seconds, careful not to touch him, though, and the kid’s jaw hit the floor.

“Hey, buddy, can you hear me?” Steve asked quietly, and when he didn’t reply, he signed _can you hear me_ just in case- Clint had taught them a few basics for when they needed to get his attention. The kid’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed.

“Yeah I can hear you.” His voice was small and raspy, and Steve immediately went about fretting over him.

“Okay, okay what’s your name, buddy?” Steve asked, and the kid opened and closed his mouth like a fish a couple of times before finally giving Steve his name.

“Matt.”

“You okay with me taking a look at your arm?” Steve asked, his hands held out, and the kid, Mat, shrunk back. Steve’s whole body moved with his deep breath, and his gaze flicked over to Bucky, who was stood a few feet from them. Bucky had a glove on over his metal hand, because he really hadn’t felt like bothering with the fake flesh sleeve today, but kids _always_ recognised him and Steve. The one glove was a little suspect, also, but lots of people did that.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Came a screech from behind Bucky, as he took a step toward Steve and the kid. Bucky whipped his head around to look at her. She was large, almost as tall as he was, he suspected, and her nose and cheeks were an angry red in contrast to her pasty skin- probably from drinking too much. “Stop helping him!”

“ _Buck,_ ” Steve warned, and he vaguely registered the Matt’s quiet, _holy shit_ as he pulled off his glove to reveal his metal hand. He stalked up the stairs to the woman, whose gaze was flicking from his hand to his thunderous face.

“You do not get to tell me what to do,” Bucky growls. She’s visibly shaking, and her breath stinks of cheap liquor, and Bucky grinds his teeth to quell a possibly quite violent episode. He’s been here before, facing down a drunk with a penchant for leaving bruises on people’s faces, and he is very actively _not_ thinking about George Barnes yelling at his mother, telling her _don’t help him,_ as he cried in the corner, pulling out bits of china embedded in his skin.

“Where are his things?” He asks, and she doesn’t reply, just gawps at him. He clenches his metal fist, purposefully scraping his fingertips against his palm so it makes an awful screech, just loud enough for her to hear.  “Move.” He does not have to push her to the side, she kind of collapses against the door, and he runs into the building. The door to the flat on the first floor is open, so he heads in. There’s an empty bottle on its side on the coffee table, but other than that, there’s not really any evidence of anything untoward happening. The place is tidy, save for the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Bucky doesn’t have a lot of difficulty finding Matt’s room- it’s sparse, and the wardrobe doors are wide open- there’s very few clothes. There’s a small suitcase on the floor, half packed with things spilling out of it. Bucky makes quick work of finishing packing the case with all Matt’s clothes and his other pair of shoes- he keeps the other one shoe, and his coat out so Matt can put them on when he goes outside. He rummages through the drawers, picking up anything that looked like it could mean something- a small photo album, a couple of letters, books, a phone, headphones. He grabs a rucksack of school supplies, zips up the suitcase, picks up the spare shoe and coat, and leaves.

He notices as he leaves that there are no photos of Matt around the flat.

The woman has not moved from where Bucky left her, but she seems to pull herself out of a close to catatonic state as she sees Bucky with Matt’s things.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” Her words are slurring together, and Bucky narrows his eyes at her.

“We’re taking him.”

“You can’t do that! He’s mine! They pay me to look after him!”

“He is not _yours,_ especially if you beat him.”

“This is illegal! You can’t do this! I’ll call the police!” Bucky laughs hollowly at her.

“And what, let them put you away for child abuse?” She stops spluttering at that, and stamps her foot like a child. Bucky keeps moving, walking toward Steve and Matt, who are both looking at him. Steve is frowning, and Matt looks dazed.

“I’ll see you in court!” The woman screeches, and Bucky ignores her. He shifts the school bag on his shoulder and hands Steve the other shoe.

“Hey kid, you think you can walk?” Steve asks, and Matt nods, letting Steve put his shoe on for him as he clings to his arm, which is in a make shift sling made out of Steve’s jumper. Now that Bucky’s closer, he can see that it’s not broken, just dislocated. Steve stands and gently lifts Matt to his feet, Bucky drapes his coat over his shoulders, and the three of them start walking back the way Steve and Bucky came. Matt’s limping, so they go slowly, and as they turn the corner, the woman stops yelling and they hear a door slam.

None of them talk. They make it half way down the next street before Steve stops and rounds on Matt, who’s been trying very hard to be quiet as he groans in pain with every other step.

“Alright enough. I’m gonna carry you, okay?” Steve says, and Matt begins to protest before Steve lifts him like he weighs absolutely nothing, and continues walking, carrying Matt bridal style. The kid whimpers as his arm is jostled. Bucky leans over and rearranges his coat, so it’s actually covering him.

“I can walk.”

“No, you can’t.”

Matt doesn’t argue beyond that, and Steve looks over at Bucky, with a grim expression on his face. Bucky nods and lifts his phone out of his pocket- there’s no way they can take him on the subway like this.

It takes three rings before Tony picks up the phone.

“Sup, Ice Man?”

“We need a car,” Bucky tells him, and Matt looks between him and Steve, asking where they’re going. “We’re taking you to our place, to keep you safe,” Bucky supplies, pulling away from the phone slightly, but Tony hears him all the same.

“Keeping who safe now?” He sounds entirely too gleeful for Bucky’s liking.

“We have a kid-” Bucky starts, but Tony interrupts.

“I know you do, I’m looking at her.” Bucky can practically _hear_ the shit-eating grin he knows Tony is sporting. Never mind the fact that it’s nine in the evening, and Nina should be asleep in bed. He can hear her little voice in the background asking _is that Papa or Daddy?_

“With us. We have a kid with us and I know you know our location already so just send a fucking car, Stark. He’s injured.”

“Oh shit. On it.” Tony hangs up.

There’s a bus stop about ten paces from where they are, so they make their way over and Steve sets Matt down between them. Bucky is hunched over and glaring at the ground like he could burn lasers into it, which leaves Steve to do the talking.

“So…Matt. That’s short for something, right?” He says, and Matt looks genuinely surprised that Steve is talking to him.

“Yeah, yeah it’s short for Wematin,” he says quietly, pronouncing each syllable very carefully. Weh-mayt-ahn. Steve repeats it back, slowly.

“It’s a cool name,” Steve says, and Matt actually smiles a little bit- though it could be a grimace, with his shoulder the way it was.

“People usually don’t bother trying, so I go with Matt,” he says, and then looks a little surprised that he trusts them with this information. But Steve is Captain America, and has that kinda face, people tend to trust him.

“S’better than _Buchanan,_ ” Bucky mumbles, and Steve snorts.

“He was gay,” Matt says, nonchalantly.

“What?” Bucky turns to him, and wonders for a moment if Matt had recognised them at all, and was talking about Bucky Barnes as if he weren’t right there next to him.

“James Buchanan the president. He was gay.” The kid clears up with a shrug, and Steve is snickering and looking at Bucky. Bucky knows exactly what he’s thinking: _that makes two of you,_ and he childishly sticks his tongue out at Steve, who just laughs more. Matt is looking at Bucky with his eyebrow raised. Now Bucky’s closer, he can see a purplish bruise on his left cheekbone and another on his jaw on the opposite side.

“You gonna let Steve pop your arm back into place?” Bucky asks, because Matt is still clinging to his right arm, and breathing hard. Bucky’s impressed he’s managed to keep so quiet about being in as much pain as he must be in.

“Is it gonna hurt?”

“Yeah but it’ll hurt more if you leave it dislocated.”

“Fine. But you do it.” He says as he glances at Bucky’s metal hand. Bucky looks over to Steve, who just shrugs at him. Bucky shrugs off his coat and lays it on the ground so the kid doesn’t have to put his head on the pavement, and Steve helps Matt lie down,  before sitting right next to him, pulling his other hand away from his dislocated shoulder. Matt grips it tight and whimpers as Bucky moves his arm to the correct position so he can relocate it.

“This is gonna hurt. A lot. So you scream and cry and do whatever you need,” Bucky tells him quietly, and Matt whimpers. Steve runs the hand that isn’t in Matt’s vice grip through the boy’s hair. Bucky kneels next to him, and slowly but surely rotates his shoulder back into place. Matt does cry, and he only shouts once when the shoulder finally goes back into place with an audible clunk.

“Hey kid can you flex your fingers for me?” Bucky asks, and Matt does with a whimper. “It’s gonna hurt for a while, but it’s not so bad now, right?” Matt just nods, but he sits up without help from either of them. Steve helps him back onto the bus stop bench, helps him put on his coat properly, and Bucky picks up his coat off the pavement and puts it back on.

A car arrives a few minutes later.

 

It doesn’t take long before they’re back at Stark tower. Tony himself had come to pick them up, and had chattered the whole way there, enough for the three of them in the back to stay quiet. He and Steve had squashed up on either side of Matt, comically large body guards in the back of the car with him. Steve’s knees were practically squashed up to his chest. As they came up to Stark tower, Matt was leaning forward to look between the two front seats.

“Fucking hell,” he breathed, and before he could stop himself, Steve mumbled _watch your language._ Matt looked at him like he’d grown another head.

Tony parked the car, and the four of them made their way toward the elevator. Matt refused to let Steve carry him again.

“Barnes-Rogers residence, Jarvis, and then the penthouse,” Tony called out.

“Right away, sir,” the AI replied, and Matt looked to the ceiling.

“What the fuck?” He turned to Tony, almost accusatory.

“Artificial intelligence, so I can have a British butler.”

“I’m glad you think so highly of me, sir,” Jarvis says, sounding as sarcastic as a robot can be.

“Artificial Intelligence like Ultron?” Matt asks, a little wary, and Tony’s grin drops.

“No. Not like Ultron.”

“Cool,” is all Matt has to say. They stay in silence up until their floor, as announced by Jarvis, and Steve grips Matt’s waist as he hobbles out of the doors. They really need to get his ankle checked out.

When they enter the apartment, they’re greeted with an entirely unimpressed Natasha Romanov, pursing her lips at them as she folds her arms.

“You said you wouldn’t be back until _at least_ eleven. You can leave her with me, you know.”

“We know,” Bucky assures her, and inclines his head in Matt’s direction. “We just had to get home a little sooner.”

“Yeah I can see that. Hey, kid.” Natasha directs at Matt, and he’s blushing a little in embarrassment.

“Hi.”

“I’m Natasha.”

Matt nods, and starts to say _I know_ but quickly corrects himself. “Nice to meet you.”

Natasha grins at him, and then gives him the once over before turning to Steve.

“Nina’s in bed, you and me should go get Bruce to check out this kid.” With that, she and Steve leave, but not before Steve kisses Bucky’s cheek, and Matt allows himself a small smile at that. It’s cute. Also, it confirms every suspicion he’s had. He and Bucky are left alone in the apartment, and Bucky heads to the kitchen, having taken off his coat to leave it on the coat rack and left Matt’s things in a neat pile by an arm chair. Matt couldn’t help but notice the children’s toy basket, stuffed to the brim.

“Can I get you something to eat?” Bucky calls back and Matt just shakes his head, shrugging off his coat and draping it across his suitcase.

“Coffee?” He asks, and Bucky frowns, not looking at him.

“It’s a bit late for that,” he mumbles, and then catches himself. He turns to Matt, looking more than a little apologetic. “Sorry, not your parent- if you want coffee I’ll get you some. You want?” Matt can’t think of the last time an adult tried to enforce a rule for his general well-being, other than anything else, so he concedes.

“Fine, no coffee,” he agrees, and then remembers the box of toys in the living room. “Do you have any cocoa?” Bucky smiles at him, and it’s a proper smile that reaches his eyes, and then turns to busy himself opening various cupboards and the fridge, grabbing milk, mugs and cocoa powder.

“Won’t be as good as Steve’s, but I can make a decent cup of cocoa.”

Matt hoists himself onto the bar stool nearest Bucky, one bare foot swollen and purple. Bucky does not comment on it- Steve has gone to get Bruce. He’ll be back in a bit.

When Bucky has poured out two mugs of cocoa, one for him and one for Matt, he hears the tell-tale roll of Nina’s chair wheels. He does not turn to look to the entrance of the kitchen, but he does see Matt’s eyebrows rise as the gentle _whoosh_ signifying Nina’s presence stops- she must think she’s being sneaky, hiding by the entrance.

“Nina Barnes-Rogers what are you doing up at this hour?” He calls, only turning once he’s finished his question. She’s pursed her lips, like she’s trying to come up with a decent lie to tell her Papa. He hides his smirk behind his mug.

“I heard you talking?” She says, and it’s probably the truth so Bucky lets her be. She often climbed into bed with him and Steve after they went out in the evenings.

“You gonna loiter in the hall way or come in and say hi?”

She wheels over to him, and then into him because she occasionally has trouble controlling her momentum still, and makes grabby hands at him so he’ll lift her up. He puts his mug down on the counter and lifts her up so she’s held tightly against his chest. She lifts her face to his, so she can brush their noses together.

“Hi Papa,” she says softly, and Bucky kisses he nose.

“Hey there, _malyshka,_ ” he says softly, and Matt is looking curiously between them. Nina cranes her head round to look at their guest.

“Who’s this?” She whispers, though it’s not really a whisper because she’s five and hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet.

“This, Nina, is Wematin,” Bucky makes sure to pronounce his name properly.

“My name is Nina Barnes-Rogers,” Nina introduces herself with a wave, and Matt waves back. He’s looking between Nina and Bucky, with an expression Bucky can’t quite place.

“Wematin Jones, Matt for short,” he tells Nina, equally formally, and the little girl grins before she frowns at him. He shifts uncomfortably as Nina studies his face and arms, and then she reaches for him. Bucky hadn’t realised how close they were standing, because Nina quite easily puts her tiny hands up to Matt’s face. She hesitates for a moment before touching him, but he nods and she carefully runs her hands over his bruises. To his credit, he does not flinch.

“Did bad people hurt you too?” She asks quietly, and Matt looks like he’s about to cry.

“Something like that, yeah,” he mumbles and swallows thickly. When Nina pulls away and Matt hangs his head and gulps down some more of his cocoa, Bucky notices how jagged his hair cut is, like his was when he first had to cut his hair by himself because he didn’t want anyone to come near him with sharp implements. Nina nods solemnly.

“My dads are good at saving kids from bad people,” Nina says proudly, and Matt gulps.

“Alright Nina I think it’s time for bed, sweetheart,” Bucky interrupts, and she adamantly shakes her head.

“No! I wanna talk to Matty!”

“He’ll still be here in the morning-” Bucky says, and Matt looks at him like he’s mental.

“I will be?”

“You will be. Come on Nina, off to the land of nod we go.” She tries to protest, but she’s yawning through it as Bucky shifts her weight so she’s in one hand and he can wheel her chair back with them in the other. Matt watches them go, and Bucky’s only gone for a few minutes before he’s back, and sits in the chair closest to Matt.

“Thank you for this, really Mr Barnes-”

“Bucky.”

“Bucky. Thank you but you can just hand me back to the authorities-”

“Nonsense,” Bucky says, and Matt clams his mouth shut at Bucky’s tone. “You’re staying here for the night, and if you’d like to leave in the morning you are perfectly welcome and we’ll drop you to wherever you feel is a safe place for you, but tonight you stay here.”

“I,” Matt’s voice falters a little under Bucky’s gaze. “I don’t really have anywhere to go- so you’d have to drop me back at the foster home.” Bucky pursed his lips, and took a moment to think about what he was going to say next. He didn’t get a chance, because at that moment Steve arrived with Bruce, who has a rather large brief case at his side- the one he keeps his medical supplies in.

“Bruce, this is Matt. Matt, Dr Bruce Banner.” Matt bites his lip to refrain himself from saying _I know._

“Nice to meet you, Matt,” Bruce says in the tone so gentle you’d never guess he could turn into a monster. Matt just nods. “So I hear Bucky had to pop your shoulder back into place, mind if I take a look at it?” Matt shrugs and Bruce heads over his way. Steve gestures for him and Bucky to leave and Bruce helps Matt out of his shirt, so he can get a proper look at his shoulder. His torso, unsurprisingly, is also a little bruised- though these bruises are already turning yellow, so they must be older, and his shoulder is swollen and practically blue. Bucky and Steve quietly slip away to the study at the end of the hall- when they open the door, they are very not surprised to see that their desk has been pushed to the side, and a bed, side table and wardrobe have been moved in. There’s a little note that says _I hope this is okay- P._ That woman had powers unlike anyone else. She was also a little insane when it came to interior decorating, and jumping the gun.

“The kid said the only place he’d be able to go back to is the foster home,” Bucky tells Steve, who’s lips curl like he’s sucking on a lemon. Bucky nods. “My thoughts exactly. Can’t take him back to the place that put him with _her_.”

“So what’s the plan?” Steve asks, and Bucky bites his lip. There was no way he was sending Matt back to a place where the sort of abuse he’d endured as a kid could happen to him.

“Can we-”

“We could adopt him?” Steve says at the same time Bucky starts to speak. He looks as nervous as Bucky feels.

“We’d have to ask him. Obviously. He’s, what, sixteen? God we don’t even know how old he is- look we’d have to ask him first but if he wants then, yeah, yeah he can stay with us right?”

“We’ll have to talk to Nina,” Steve says as he nods, and Bucky grins.

“She seemed pretty keen about talking to him when she woke up-”

“She woke up?”

“Don’t worry she’s fast asleep now- but yeah, she whinged the whole time I was putting her back down.”

“We’ll talk to them.”

“There’ll be court proceedings, won’t be as easy as it was with Nina-” Bucky says, rubbing a hand over his face.

“We’ll think more about it in the morning,” Steve says, taking Bucky’s hand in his, kissing his engagement ring. “Let’s go check on him, yeah?”

When they get back, Bruce has put Matt’s right arm in a sling, and is wrapping his foot in bandages. He’s left a salve on the counter for the bruises, and his notebook is open, filled with his doctor’s scrawl. Bucky took a cursory look at his notes about Matt, with today’s date at the top.

 _Wematin Jones_  
16 years old (December 15 th)  
Mohegan  
Foster ‘parent’ hit him and pushed him down the stairs  
Dislocated shoulder- relocated without incident, no major blood vessels ruptured, nothing torn- still put in a sling to aid rehab  
Sprained ankle- just swollen- bandaged  
Bruised cheek, jaw and torso- no fractures or breaks

“He’ll be alright as long as he doesn’t fall down any more stairs,” Bruce says to them, without even looking up from what he’s doing. Steve looks like he’s about to scold him, but Matt is rolling his eyes and looks to be in slightly better spirits, so he lets it go.

“Thanks, Bruce,” Bucky says, and Matt quickly says _thanks Dr Banner_. Bruce flaps his hand at both of them and shrugs.

“Just doing my job.” When he’s done, he puts a bottle of painkillers in front of Matt. “In case you need them.” Matt just nods, and Bruce bids them all goodnight before he leaves. It’s suddenly very quiet, almost oppressively so.

“It’s getting late,” Steve remarks, and Matt shrugs with his left shoulder. “We’ll show you to your room, and we can talk about everything in the morning, okay?”

Bucky gives the boy a look, and any protest he had died on his lips.

“Okay.”

Matt lets Steve lead him to the study-turned bedroom, and Bucky grabs his things from where they were by the armchair. He noticed Matt had left his shoes by the front door, neatly placed next to theirs. Bucky takes his stuff and leaves it by the wardrobe, unzipping the suitcase of Matt’s clothes for him. It’s difficult doing things with only one arm.

“There’s a spare tooth brush in the bathroom cupboard under the sink,” Steve tells him. “It’s the door down the hall- not the one opposite Nina’s room, that’s our bedroom, and don’t hesitate to come wake us up if you need us- it’s the one just before that.” Steve is rambling, and Matt just lets him as he sits on the bed, trying to stifle a yawn. Bucky puts a kind hand on Steve’s shoulder, who becomes aware of all his talking, and quickly shuts up.

“Night kid,” Bucky says, pulling Steve away who echoes his sentiment, adding _we’ll see you in the morning_. They flick the switch, and shut the door behind them, most of the way.

It’s only when they’re safely back in their room do they dare to talk. They take turns in the en suite bathroom, listening out for either of the kids, and Bucky makes quick work of shucking his shirt and trousers to the floor, and then unhooking his prosthetic from his shoulders, leaving it in its stand. Steve’s already in bed as Bucky is hauling his pyjama top on over his head.

“You think he’ll agree to stay?” Steve asks as Bucky lies down next to him.

“I hope he does, Stevie,” he says, curling into Steve as he hugs him, one armed. Steve sighs into the embrace as Bucky rubs his back. “But we can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want.”

“Why’d’ya think she kicked him out?” Steve is careful to talk very quietly.

“Who knows- they were paying her, and she wasn’t keen on letting him go-”

“She’s not getting him back, if we have any say in it.” Steve sounds more defiant than ever.

“No. No she won’t. Not if we can help it.”


	2. You want to what?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt wakes up in the Avengers tower.

Matt woke up in the softest bed he’d ever slept in. The sheets were whiter than white, and his head sinks into the pillow and he felt like he’s in a damn five star hotel. The clock on the bedside table read 7:58am. He was about to let his eyes close again- and then he remembered the events of last night. Beth had caught him _practicing,_ drunker than he’d seen her before, and screamed at him to get out. He’d tried to pack his things, but she’d grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor- hitting him across the face twice before he had a chance to put up his arms in defence. He’d managed to get out, with one shoe on, before she pushed him down the stairs that lead up to the flat, and into the street. He’d yelled when he felt his ankle twist, and again when he felt his arm pop out of place- she was screaming at him, but he hadn’t been paying attention because-

Because Captain _fucking_ American and the Winter _fucking_ Soldier were running his way. He was pretty sure he’d hit his head and was hallucinating something insane, because there was the Captain, asking if he could hear him and what his name was and whether he could take a look at his injuries as the Winter Soldier looked on behind him, just standing there being threatening. Then Beth was screaming at them, because she probably hadn’t recognised them, until the Soldier pulled off his glove to reveal his _goddamn_ metal hand, and he was growling at her and she was quaking in her boots- well, slippers- before letting him past into the building. The Captain kept checking him over, asking what hurt, and then the Soldier was back, with all Matt’s stuff in his hands, and then they were walking away.

Captain _fucking_ America had carried him like he was some sorta baby, and they’d stopped at the bus stop and he had chatted to them about gay presidents, of all the _fucking_ topics in the world, and the Winter Soldier had popped his shoulder back into place.

Tony Stark, yes _the_ Tony Stark, had picked them up and driven them to his tower with the freaky AI that ran the place, to the home of Captain America and the Winter Soldier, and he’d met the frigging Black Widow and the Hulk, though he was Dr Banner at that point, had bandaged him up and recorded his injuries and shit for medical and legal purposes, probably. He’d drank cocoa with the Winter Soldier- he’d met the _kid_ of Captain _freaking_ America and the Winter Soldier and she told him they did this sort of thing all the time. He remembered a news headline from a while back, they’d rescued a bunch of kids from a maniac scientist. (Also- the rumours were apparently true. Captain America and the Winter Soldier had a kid. Everyone in New York had heard about the time their auntie’s ex-husband’s sister’s next door neighbour’s dog-walker’s son swore he saw Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes holding the hands of a tiny kid or two, but hey it was actually true.)

They’d given him a room, wished him goodnight and told him they’d see him in the morning, that he could stay with them- they’d said it in a way that sounded like _you don’t have to leave_ as well- and he’d changed and used their spare toothbrush before climbing into bed- _fucking hell how hard had he hit his head?_

But here he was, with his arm in a sling and his ankle bandaged up, in a fresh pair of pyjamas from the ones he’d been wearing when Beth had kicked him out on the street, in the comfiest bed he’d ever been in. He hauled himself out of bed, kind of loathed to leave it, and padded over to the bathroom. He properly looked at himself for the first time as he brushed his teeth. In the morning light, the bruises were obvious on his copper skin, and his eyes were rimmed red from crying- he looked like he’d walked out of a fucking war zone. He spat angrily- angry at himself for not leaving sooner, angry at Beth for putting him in this state- and tried to brush his fingers through his hair to make himself look at least slightly presentable.

It wasn’t until he left the bathroom could he hear the voices in the kitchen- one considerably higher pitched than the other two. He steps into entrance of the kitchen, which is really just where the hall way ends, and he has to blink to take it all in. The Winter Soldier- _Bucky_ , he corrects himself, is sat by a tiny child, _Nina,_ he remembers, as Captain America- _Steve,_ flips pancakes. It’s so unbelievably, comfortably domestic, that he feels like he’s intruding, unwanted- but then he sees that there are four bowls of fruit on the breakfast bar, three half eaten and one untouched. He almost misses the fact that Bucky only has one flesh hand, and the metal one is nowhere to be seen. Steve notices him then.

“Mornin’, Wematin- didn’t expect you to be up this early.” Steve is beaming, and Nina gives a little gasp as she looks up and sees him. She doesn’t look horrified, just excited.

“Matt is fine,” he says, his voice still thick with sleep, and he clears his throat. “Morning.”

“Good mornin’ Matty!” Nina crows and she hops down to run over to him. _Wasn’t she in a wheelchair?_ He looks down at her, she’s stopped short of barrelling into him and is vibrating like a little hummingbird, and she looks so pleased. He notices them that she’s not wearing any pyjama bottoms, and has some sorta weird metal contraption attached to her legs, and it goes up past her hips, as far as he can tell. He smiles down at her, and her grin gets wider as she holds her hand out for him to take. He does, though he has to lean down a little because he’s pretty tall for sixteen, and she’s pretty small for a five year old.

“You can sit next to me!” She tells him, and he does as she asks. Bucky pushes the full bowl of fruit toward him, and hands him a fork.

“Eat. Steve’s making pancakes.”

“But ya gotta eat fruit first because them’s the rules and it’s good for ya!” Nina says around a mouthful of peaches, and Matt just nods and eats under Bucky’s watchful gaze. Nina babbles on and on, showing him the book she’s reading, and Matt notices that her accent is a really weird mix of slightly Russian, mostly Brooklyn, but some words have a kinda Southern twang and others are undoubtedly British- like she can’t make up her mind on what she wants to sound like. It’s cute as hell, just like the rest of her.

They eat their pancakes, and all of them make an effort to include him in the conversation, but it doesn’t feel forced or fake and it makes his mouth go a little bit dry with just how _nice_ they are being to him- but you’d expect that from the Avengers, heroes of, well, the World.

Steve cooked, so Bucky does the washing up, one handed, which Matt thinks is a feat in itself, and Steve carries a screeching and laughing Nina over to the living room, and Bucky shoos Matt away from the kitchen to go after them. Nina wants Matt to play with her, and Steve tells her Matt can’t sit on the floor so she drags all the toys she wants to play with over to him. She decides she wants to build the tallest building _ever,_ and Matt helps her, explaining patiently that she’s got to make the base really big so it stands up as it gets taller. Steve is watching them, and communicating silently with Bucky over the back of the sofa, and Matt feels a little like he’s been tested, but Nina pays her dads no mind, so he tries not to as well.

It’s ten, and all of them are still in their pyjamas, so Steve and Bucky send him off to go and change, and Steve tackles Nina who complains _loudly_ that it is Saturday and she _should not have to change on Saturdays, Daddy._ Steve fireman lifts her so she’s dangling over his shoulder, and she gives up wriggling and just rolls her eyes at Bucky- her _Papa_.

“You need any help with anything, ‘cause of your arm?” Bucky asks, and Matt just shakes his head.

“I’m gonna go help Steve with the dinosaur,” he says, and Matt can hear distinct roaring from the room with _NINA_ written across the door. He limps back to his room, and Bucky disappears to go find his husband- Matt supposes they’re married- they’re both wearing rings.

Bucky walks in to his daughter’s room to find Nina in a clean pair of underwear, her legs, socks, and nothing else. Steve’s lap is filled with a mountain of clothes.

“Nina, love, can we please decide on an outfit that it _not_ pyjamas, and _not_ your princess dress which you will change out of in five minutes because it’s itchy?”

“No.” She pouts petulantly and crosses her arms- or at least she tries to, her hands are just holding onto her elbows.

“Hey Nina, can I talk to you, like a grown up for a minute?” Bucky says, as he sits next to Steve on the floor. He crosses his legs, and Nina climbs into his lap, nodding.

“Dyu like Matt, Nina?” Bucky asks carefully, and she grins like it’s the Fourth of July.

“Yup! He’s cool. He builds good towers. He also likes maple syrup on his pancakes, and _I_ like maple syrup on my pancakes,” she says very seriously. Five year old logic, Bucky decides, is a marvel.

“Would you mind if he stayed with us?” Bucky asks, and Nina cocks her head to the side as she thinks, just like Steve does. Steve himself is watching the two of them thoughtfully.

“Like for a sleepover?” She says finally, and Bucky shakes his head. Steve pulls a vest over Nina’s head- she’s too distracted by her Papa to notice. Lindsey and Michael had offered to take her for the afternoon, when they’d called by chance that morning. Michael liked taking his granddaughter out for treats- he’d found a new ice cream place this time. Bucky and Steve were old fashioned enough to believe that going out with grandparents meant Sunday best, even on Saturdays.

“No, like forever.”

“He’s gonna stay with us forever?” She says, very loudly, and Bucky wonders if Matt can hear them. Though, her voice is muffled a bit as Steve pulls a flowery shirt over her head.

“Only if he wants to,” Steve says quickly, pulling her arms into the shirt with little yellow flowers on the collar, and doing up the buttons. Bucky grabs a pair of trousers from the pile on Steve’s lap, and pats Nina’s lower back to get her to stand up. He holds her waist as she wriggles herself into the trousers.

“If we’re allowed to, because we have to talk to authorities first,” Bucky continues, and Nina sags a little bit in disappointment.

“Like the police or Mr Fury?”

“Both and then a few more.” Nina sighs, and belatedly notices that she’s miraculously gotten dressed. She looks a little betrayed.

“Why am I wearing this nice shirt?” She says as she turns to Steve.

“Lindsey and Michael are taking you out for ice cream.”

“Ice cream!” She exclaims, and it’s half a question. Steve nods, and Nina runs out of the door. When Bucky and Steve catch up with her, she’s already at the front door, pulling on her shoes.

“Nina you’re not going yet,” Bucky tells her, taking off the shoe she just managed to put on as she puts on the other one. “We’re gonna have lunch here first with Matt.”

He expected more of a fight than the _oh, okay_ that he got, but Nina was up and off again before he had a chance to stop her. She rushed past Steve, straight to the door of the study-turned-bedroom, calling out for Matt. He pops his head around the door, using it as a barrier to hide his naked chest. He’s evidently been struggling with his t-shirt, by the mussed state of his hair.

“I’ll be out in a minute okay? And then we can do something?”

“Okay!” Nina says, and she makes a beeline for the living room and her art supplies. Bucky wondered where the hell she gets all her energy from, because even though she slept in later than usual, she hadn’t had as much sleep as she needed. She’d have to go to bed early tonight to avoid any tantrums that came with being sleep-deprived at the age of five. Matt appears a moment later, running a hand through his hair, and Steve, who had disappeared to go and get changed himself a while back, appears and hands him a hairbrush, which he accepts gratefully.

Bucky goes and changes, and puts on his arm. He can hear Nina laughing, and there’s a chuckle he doesn’t recognise so it must be Matt’s, and he smiles a little to himself.

Nina insists on helping Bucky make the pasta for lunch, and he actually bothers to make the spaghetti himself, just like his mom used to when she had the time, and Matt sits on the counter on the other side of Nina and watches.  They eat, and half way through clearing up Lindsey and Michael arrive. Nina rushes over to them, wrapping her arms around Lindsey’s knees, and then lets Michael pick her up. He groans like she weighs a tonne, which she finds endlessly funny.

“How’s my favourite granddaughter?” He asks, and Nina shakes her head at him.

“I’m your _only_ granddaughter, silly!”

Matt is watching the exchange with a confused expression. He looks to Bucky, and then to Lindsey and Michael, and back again.

“Lindsey, this is Matt- Wematin,” Bucky introduces, and if Matt were a cartoon, there’d be a lightbulb going off above his head to match his expression. The kid liked history, which much Bucky had guessed from their conversation at the bus stop, and he was invested enough in the Avengers to recognise them all immediately, and Bucky wondered how much he knew about him and Steve. He knew Becca, Harriet and Lindsey’s names all featured in a couple of records- but it was only a couple.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, young man,” Lindsey beamed at him, and Matt smiled shyly back. She had a kind face, and a general _don’t fuck with me_ kinda demeanour that Matt found it easy to respect. She didn’t stare at his bruises, or his arm or his foot, she held his gaze as she spoke to him. “That over there is my husband Michael, as soon as he stops cooing over Nina he’ll _be polite and say hi._ ”

Matt couldn’t help the small smile that came as Michael said _hello_ without even looking away from Nina. Lindsey rolled her eyes. She spoke to Bucky and Steve, Michael bundled Nina into her jacket and scarf, pocketed her hat just in case, and in the space of ten minutes, they were out the door. Without Nina, the apartment was very, very quiet.

“Must be nice, still having a sister after all this time,” Matt says, and inwardly curses himself for overstepping boundaries- it’s a little creepy, and he feels odd letting them know that yes he has read every book in the library about them, simply because he’s read every history book in the library, when he’s standing right in front of them. Bucky doesn’t even blink as he sits down on the sofa next to Steve.

“Yeah it is,” is all he says on the matter.

“Hey, kid, come sit down,” Steve says, making a vague gesture to anyone of the seats available in the living room. Matt picks the arm chair near the sofa.

“We wanted to talk to you, a bit, about, well, everything.” Steve sighs at his own ineloquence.

“So we can help with your plan of action,” Bucky supplies, and Steve nods. “Like I told you yesterday, we’ll drop you off in a safe place if you want us to, and we can help talk to the police about what happened-”

“The police?” Matt says hoarsely, and Bucky frowns at him.

“Yeah the police. That woman beat you to a pulp- she’s not gonna get away with it-”

“The police aren’t going to give a damn!”

“Excuse me?” Steve asks, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. He sounds a little shocked at Matt’s lack of faith in the authority systems, and Matt wants to roll his eyes.

“They won’t give a shit. Native kid, foster kid, _Inhuman_ kid, in a rough area of Brooklyn calling domestic abuse allegations on a woman? Nah ah they ain’t gonna believe me.”

“They’ll believe us,” Bucky points out, and Matt just shrugs in response.

“Inhuman?” Steve picks up on, and Matt mutters _shit_ softly under his breath. He looks between them and the door, and Bucky thinks he must be mistaking their tense posture for hostility. He makes a conscious effort to relax his shoulders.

“That why she kick you out? For being Inhuman?” 

“Yeah. Also a racist, but yeah, mostly for the being Inhuman,” Matt says, and he’s jutting out his jaw like he’s ready for a fight if it comes down to it.

“Racist?” Steve asks, and Matt nods, gulping and running a hand through his hair.

“She- she cut my hair.” It had been a few weeks after he’d moved in with Beth. She’d slapped him and made him sit in the kitchen as she hacked away at his hair, with a blunt pair of scissors- it was the only time he’d cried in front of her, ever. Usually he wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction, but cutting his hair _hurt_ in a way that beatings didn’t.

 Steve grinds his teeth, he’s frowning and angry, and Bucky nudges his knee with his own to remind him to _stand down._

“You mind me asking what you can do? Powers wise?” Bucky asks, and Matt looks at him warily. Bucky sighs and shakes his head. “We ain’t gonna hurt you for being different, kid, have you seen us? Queer, genetically modified soldiers, I’m short a limb, our kid’s in a wheelchair and we live in a tower with a witch, some more genetically modified weirdos and a man with a nuclear reactor for a heart. We’re good with the _different_ thing.”

“Nina goes to school with Inhuman kids,” Steve pipes up, and Matt raises an eyebrow at him. Steve immediately shrinks into himself with an apologetic look on his face. It _was_ a kinda old fashioned logic to go on- like the old man that had been on the news the other day- _I’m not racist, I’ve got coloured neighbours!_ Bucky and Steve had rolled their eyes at that. But Steve hadn’t meant it like that- he was nervous, trying to be helpful, trying to get Matt to like them.

“I’ve gotten a hold of it now, mostly, didn’t for a while because I didn’t have a lot of space or time to practice but-” he rambles, as he sticks his hand out in front of himself. He focuses on the tips of his fingers, and slowly makes a fist. Much to his satisfaction, his hand completely disappears as his nails bite into his palm.

“Holy shit,” Steve says as Bucky’s jaw drops, and Matt makes his hand reappear and lets his arm rest on his knees. He looks apprehensive still.

“That’s cool,” Bucky tells him, and Steve nods. “Like, really fucking cool. What’s that film Nina likes- The Incredibles? That one? I knew they were onto something.” Matt actually laughs at that.

“But in all seriousness, kid, we’re gonna have to call the police. Especially so she’ll be taken off the list of foster parents.” Matt struggles to find an argument with that, but he shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“When are you gonna call them?” he asks quietly, and Bucky looks at Steve with a frown.

“Today, if we can. The sooner the better.”

“Okay,” Matt says, and he sags a little. “I’ll go pack my stuff, cause they’ll be taking me back-”

“Actually,” Steve stops his train of thought, and Matt’s sharp eyes focus on him. “We wanted to talk to you about that too. If you want to stay here, you’re welcome to. It might be difficult, legally, and we’ll have to do a whole load of form filling and they’ll do pysch assessments and what not on me and Buck, but if you’d like, we’d like to foster you-”

“But it’s not really fostering, more like adoption, if you want, because we ain’t gonna get _paid_ for having a kid,” Bucky adds, and Steve nods so hard it looks like his neck might snap. Matt just gawps at them.

“ _You_ wanna foster _me_?”

“Yes?” Bucky ventures, and Matt looks at him in confusion.

“You literally know nothing about me- what if I’m a young offender, a _psychopath,_ and you’re just inviting me into your home with your kid-”

“Are you a young offender or a psychopath?”

“…no.”

“Well then,” Bucky says with a shrug, and Matt purses his lips.

“Why would I tell you if I was a young offender or a psycho if I was one?”

“You have a point there, but we also have a good friend who’s a telepath, so we could always just get her to talk to you. Also, we have a Tony, who’s obsessive about knowing everything, so he’d probably done a load of background checks on you before he even let you into the building-”

“If I may interrupt, Sergeant Barnes,” Jarvis’ voice came from the general direction of the speakers by the TV, causing Matt to jump and Bucky to roll his eyes. The AI usually left them alone, but apparently he’d been eavesdropping. “Mr Stark had me do some research, and nothing untoward came up about Mr Jones.”

“There we go,” Steve said, a little too smug. “Also, you’re dismissed, Jarvis.” The command triggered the usual shutting down of Jarvis until further notice. Matt was worrying his lip, incomplete and incoherent thoughts buzzing through his brain like flies. Bucky and Steve didn’t know anything about him, what if they didn’t like him? They’d known him for what? Less than twenty four hours. What if they got bored of him and sent him back? They were superheroes, for fucks sake, why would they want anything to do with him?

“Us being…who we are in the eye of the public, is not as important as you think it is,” Bucky says. Matt hadn’t realised he’d been talking out loud.

“And we’d like to get to know you, and we wouldn’t ever get bored of you, if you decided you wanted to stay with us,” Steve adds and Matt gulps.

“If the lawyers say I can stay with you.”

“I have a _sneaking_ suspicion that they just might,” Bucky said, looking at Steve. He had a point, who wouldn’t trust Captain America?

“So,” Matt says quietly, and he looks between them both rather than at them so he doesn’t have to meet their eyes. “You’d actually, if I asked, you’d actually adopt me?”

“Yes. Yes we would.” Steve takes Bucky’s metal hand in his, and they’re both looking at him with such _care_ that it makes his breath hitch.

“Okay. Okay.” He sucks in a breath and slowly lets it out. “We should probably talk to the police while Nina’s not here.”

 

Steve calls the police, and spends a solid hour on the phone going from person to person until he’s talking to the Chief of Police for New York City, who promises that he’s sending his finest detectives their way. Matt sits curled up on the sofa with a book he’s not really paying any attention to open on his lap, running a hand through his hair over and over. 

“You know, when I got bruises, my mom used to make me put this nasty vinegar and warm water mixture on them. Smelt something evil, but it made ‘em fade faster,” Bucky told him conversationally as he sat down on the other end of the sofa.

“Mine used to crush up parsley and make a paste.” He rarely spoke about his mom, but he supposed he was going to have to at some point. She’d died when he was thirteen- she got hit by a car- a drunk driver. It had always been just the two of them, he didn’t have grandparents, and they couldn’t find the man whose name was on his birth certificate, so he was placed into the foster system, and stayed there until the age of sixteen. No one wanted kids older than ten, really. Beth had been in it for the money, and he’d been with her for three months before Bucky and Steve burst into his life in a valiant rescue mission.

Bucky didn’t ask for any details, but Matt kept talking anyway, because he felt like, for the first time in a very long time, someone might actually listen to him.

“I was always falling over, so there was always cold compresses and bruise creams and plasters all over our house.” He felt like he needed to defend her. She was a great mom, making sure he had the best of whatever she could afford to give him. The first time he’d ever been smacked was by Beth.

“My dad used to hit me,” Bucky said quietly, and Matt just stared at him. He said it so uncaringly, like it wasn’t anything. “Me and my mom. I never let him get to my sisters. But yeah, my mom used to be real good at home remedies- and Steve’s mom was a nurse, so she had all sorts of tricks up her sleeve.” Matt was staring still, and Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. “What I’m trying to say is you can talk to me about what happened, yeah? ‘Cause I get it. Also, we can clear up your face faster before you gotta go back to school- I figure you don’t have to go back until Wednesday at the earliest, if you don’t want to.” Matt flushed. He’d momentarily forgotten about school, in the madness of this weekend.

“I’ll go in Wednesday.” He didn’t want to be out in public looking like he was- and he figured he could use the arm and the foot and the ‘settling in to his new home’ as a decent excuse. Though Bruce said as long as he was careful, and he took the meds, he didn’t have to keep the sling on beyond Monday.

“Where is school for you, anyway?”

“Forest Hills.”

“Queens? You were going from Brooklyn to Queens every day? Didn’t it take you forever?”

“Yeah, but I like it there. I used to be in Queens, the foster home was Queens, and I like the school. Anyway, they try and avoid moving kids around too much, so there’s some sort of stability.”

“Got it.”

“Detective Nichols is gonna be here in half an hour,” Steve told them, sitting on the arm of the sofa by Bucky, slinging an arm around his shoulders. His gold ring stood out on his pale skin.

“Are you two actually married?” Matt asked, and Steve grinned.

“Engaged, still. We were gonna wait until Easter next year to actually tie the knot.”

“Nice,” Matt wanted to face palm- couldn’t he think of anything else to say? But Bucky was laughing, so it was alright.

“It is, quite, yeah.”

 

Detective Nichols arrived at four in the afternoon on the dot, and Bucky made coffee while Steve sat with Matt at the table, opposite the policewoman. Steve was close, and his presence was comforting as the detective asked Matt all the questions she needed, from where he went to school, to how long he’d been with Beth, to the exact nature of the events of last night. He told her everything, with a little encouragement from Bucky and Steve, and by the end of his questions she’d filled three pages of her note book. She spoke to Bucky and Steve, and another three pages were filled. She wasn’t too bad, but she put Bucky on edge still, with her pinched facial expressions. She asks if she can take photos of Matt and his injuries, and he lets her. Steve tells her about Bruce’s medical records from yesterday, and she says she’ll call him for a copy.

“So about accommodation-” she began, but Steve cut her off.

“We’re going to call the foster home, and foster Matt. If he decides he wants to stay with us, then we’ll adopt him.” Detective Nichols gave Steve and Bucky a calculating look, before turning to Matt.

“Can I speak to you alone?”

Steve and Bucky reluctantly leave, and Matt is reluctant to let them go, but they disappear off into their bedroom.

“You’re happy with this arrangement? They’ve been good to you while you’ve been here?”

“Yeah- yeah Steve and Bucky are nice,” he says. “They have a kid too, and she’s really happy- I trust them.”

“Okay. So you’re staying of your own free will?”

“Yes.” _Jesus,_ what did this woman have against Bucky and Steve?

“Just wanted to check, Wematin,” she said, butchering his name. He swallowed a sarcastic retort and nodded. She was just doing her job, and making sure she did it thoroughly. She calls back Bucky and Steve, and tells the three of them she’ll be in touch. Steve thanks her, they talk in hushed tones by the front door for a bit, and as the door shuts behind her, Matt hears her calling a team to go to Beth’s address to arrest her.

“She says the court proceedings are going to be straight forward, and you won’t even have to go in.”

“Alright.”

“We’ll call person who had us do Nina’s adoption papers and get them to draw up the foster papers for you. Better to leave it to the experts.”

“Alright,” is all Matt can say, and Steve looks worriedly at Bucky, who’s carefully watching him. He’s okay- just exhausted.

“How about we watch a film?” Bucky suggests, and Matt nods. Bucky and Steve sit on either side of him, they get popcorn and everything, and half way through _How to Train Your Dragon_ (a truly fantastic film that was one of Matt’s favourites) Nina came home.

“Matty!” She squealed, and ran to his arms for a hug. Steve craned his neck over the children’s heads to look at Bucky.

“We’ve been usurped,” he mouthed, and Bucky shook his head fondly.

The four of them finish the movie together, Steve makes dinner, and it’s not long past eight before Matt and Nina are both yawning and sent to bed. Matt thinks it’s secretly a ruse for Steve and Bucky to get an early night too.

As he lies down, Matt sends up a silent thank you to his mom, wherever she is, for looking out for him. Even after all this time, she was doing her best to keep him safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment to let me know what you thought!!! I honestly appreciate every single one so so so much!


	3. The Lawyer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The authorities arrive. Nina is cheeky as usual.

On Sunday morning, Bucky does not set down breakfast in front of Matt when he sits at the table, but two bowls- one filled with a dark, vinegary smelling mixture, and the other with a green paste.

“I know you’ve been using the salve Bruce gave you, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to use these either.” Matt smiles- the paste isn’t exactly like the one his mom used to make, but it’s the thought that counts. Bucky’s already got his metal arm on today, and though he and Steve are only in jeans and t-shirts, they look more put together than either of the kids. Matt is still in pyjamas, and Nina is in her natural state of vest, knickers and metal legs- though she has one sock on today. Matt does not question it.

Bucky helps him out of his sling and pyjama shirt, and helps him liberally apply the different remedies to his bruises- he uses the parsley paste on his face, and the vinegar one on his shoulder and ribs. Nina is sat watching cartoons as Steve tries to get her to drink a whole glass of milk- he seems to be on the losing side of this battle as Nina dodges out of the way so she can pay attention to Dora. She does seem to know all of the Spanish being used, which is pretty impressive. Bucky is idly chatting away to Matt about their plans for the day as he puts away the no empty bowls, and trades them for a plate of bacon and eggs, which Matt eagerly eats.

“So we have people coming from the foster home at eleven so we can do all the paper work, and there’ll be a lawyer and things, but depending on how long that takes, what do you wanna do today? We can head to a museum or something, if you’d like?”

“Would it be okay if we just stayed in?” Matt asks, feeling a little overwhelmed- they were doing so much for him, he didn’t want to be any more of a bother. Also, he wasn’t quite ready to face the outside world yet- being in the tower was like some sort of insane lucid dream, and he didn’t want to let go of that yet.

“Whatever you want, kid, your call.”

Matt nodded and polished off his breakfast, and Bucky let him help clear up. Doing that sort of thing together made him feel less like a guest in their home, more part of it. Matt was drying things up and putting them away, according to Bucky’s instruction.

“That goes in the drawer next to the fridge- yeah, that one- so what are you doing in school?”

“AP World History, US History, AP Math, Spanish, English Literature, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Film Studies,” Matt rattled off, counting on his fingers as he checked off the list. “Oh, and gym, but no one cares about that.”

“When I was a kid we had history, science, math and English and that was it. Our gym teacher was not a nice guy- making Steve do laps even though he could barely get up the stairs without getting out of breath.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever met a gym teacher who was a nice guy,” Matt says, and Bucky makes a non-committal hum in agreement.

“So, history?”

“When I was young-” he says, and Bucky gives him a look. “When I was young _er,_ then,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and Bucky smirks, “my mom used to tell me all the oral history she knew- everything from the beginning with the Great Spirit to when the British came over and started wars with our people- but there were gaps. I think, well, whaddya know about Native American history?”

“Not a lot,” Bucky admits. “When we were kids, there were laws- people were kept in reservations, kids taken from parents, that sort of thing- my mom used to say the government was ‘bleaching’ the people, like they tried to with every immigrant population too.”

“Yeah- from 1871 to the 60s, there was a systematic effort to stop Native people from practicing our languages, religions, it was cultural eradication.” Bucky stopped what he was doing and watched as Matt spoke- his passion was obvious, it was the most confident he’d spoken the whole time they’d been with him. “My mom said her parents went to a boarding school where they were only allowed to speak English and shit like that- taught by Christian missionaries- but they got out okay, and they had my mom, and taught her all that they could remember, but they died when she was pretty young. She had me, and taught me everything they taught her, and then she died. But yeah- there are gaps in the stories, chunks of time that are just missing, so I wanted to teach myself. Only problem is, a lot of the stuff I could find is from pretty white perspectives- like Mohican isn’t a thing, you know that right? It’s a mix of Mohegan and Mahican, because people couldn’t be fucked-” Bucky snorts as Matt bit his lip and looked over to Nina, and then back at him, guilt written all over his face. “-sorry, kid nearby- because people couldn’t be bothered to actually pay attention?”

“I did not know that.”

“Well, now you do.”

“I do now.” He goes back to washing up, and thinks about how he’s going to ask his next question. “What about your dad?” Bucky asks softly, and Matt wrinkles his nose. Bucky knows he could just get Jarvis to draw up Matt’s file, and it would probably be less uncomfortable, but he felt like he needed to learn about the kid from him- he’d probably had enough of people learning about him from sheets of paper, and not from talking to him.

“Don’t have one. My mom had to put his information down on the birth certificate, and I know he was African-American from what she told me and also from just looking at my face, but yeah. Don’t have one. Still did a lot of research into black history.”

“So it’s less an obsession with American presidents and more of just, everything ever?”

“Yeah,” Matt says as he blows his hair out of his face. Bucky wonders if he should offer to tie it up for him. “I did research into James Buchanan when I was looking at institutionalised racism- because he supported slavery and the genocide of Native Americans- it’s funny how people of different minorities can experience oppression and still be so _blind_ to other people’s suffering.”

Bucky wondered if the universe was playing a cruel joke on him, letting his parent’s name him _James Buchanan_ of all things, but he suspected that was George’s doing more than his mom’s. Matt was looking at him like he was a puzzle to be figured out.

“You make the name better though- you’re a good person. Anyway, nowadays people forget that he was even a president.”

“Thanks, kid,” Bucky says earnestly, and honestly it made his heart clench a little. He was a sweet kid, sweeter than Bucky deserved, probably, just like Nina.

“But did you know that Vice President Charles Curtis was half Native American?” Matt asks, and Bucky shakes his head.

“No- wasn’t he vice president for Hoover though?”

“Yup!” Matt launched into another history lesson, and Bucky listened. At some point, Nina joined them, sitting at the table and drawing quietly, just listening to Matt talk. When he stops, having relayed an in depth study to them all, it’s almost time for the people from the foster home to arrive. Bucky sends him off to shower and change, and grapples Nina to get her ready for the day while Steve digs around to find all the papers and forms they’d had to fill in for Nina’s adoption, because they’d probably want to see them. Steve puts Nina in a dress this time, and she complains yet again about having to get dressed on the weekend, but Steve explains that she really has to be on her best behaviour today because people were visiting to see if Matt could stay with them.

“If Matt stays with us, is he gonna be my big brother?” She asks, and the question kind of stumps Steve.

“Yeah- yeah I guess so, if that’s what you and him both want.”

“I do. Tia has a big brother, and so does Miguel, and Charlie _is_ a big brother, so I think it would be cool.”

Matt doesn’t appear for a while, so Nina runs to go get him. She politely knocks on his door, at Steve’s request, and Bucky takes over trying to sort out all the documents Steve left on the coffee table.

“Matt!” She calls as she knocks on the door. “Matty are you okay?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she barges into the room. Matt is stood barefoot by his bed, in the same jeans as yesterday (Steve notes that he really needs a belt to keep them up because they’re large around his skinny hips and slightly too long for his legs- though the kid was tall and probably still growing, so it was fair enough that he’d bought a large pair) staring at a couple of t-shirts and a collared shirt he’d laid out on his bed. His hair is still slightly damp from the shower, but he’s been standing there so long it’s already nearly dry.

“The t-shirts are too casual and the shirt is too small,” he bemoans, looking up at Steve. He actually seems quite distressed by his lack of clothing choice.

“I have to wear nice clothes, so you have to wear nice clothes,” Nina says with her arms crossed, and Matt agrees with her. He needs to prove to this people that he’s happy with Bucky and Steve, because then maybe they’ll let him stay with them- otherwise he’ll have to go back and the fostering process can literally take _months_ before kids are allowed to stay with a family. He really hopes that their literal hero status can swing that. Bucky had been the Winter Soldier, sure, but not for years, and he’d recently been spotted in the field with the other Avengers a fair number of times, fighting with them, so it would be okay, right?

“C’mon,” Steve said, leading him out the door and down the corridor. Nina grabbed Matt’s hand, not allowing him a moment’s hesitation before he was dragged into Steve and Bucky’s room. Steve was stood in front of the wardrobe, tapping his index finger against his bottom lip. He looked Matt up and down, and then rummaged around in the wardrobe.

“You’re nearly as tall as Bucky- though he’s a bit broader than you are, but this should fit,” Steve says, as he throws a shirt at Matt for him to catch. He involuntarily flinches as the shirt comes flying at him, but he catches it. Steve frowns a little, and looks apologetic. It’s dark blue and neatly pressed, with shiny black buttons. Matt doesn’t think he’d worn anything this nice, well, ever.

“Try it on!” Nina demands, and with a little help from Steve, he manages it. Steve passes him a belt, and he loops that through his jeans so that for once, they actually sit on his hips.

“Nina, kiddo, can you grab Matt’s sling?” Steve asks, and she nods vigorously. She’s been itching for something to do, Matt can tell; she’s bouncing up and down on her toes.

“Where is it?”

“Ledge by the bath-” Matt tells her, and before he can give further instruction, she’s off. He can hear her footsteps, little metal clanks as she runs, and she’s back in a minute, exaggeratedly puffing like she’s run a marathon.

“Thank you,” Matt says, at the same time Steve calls her a _little drama queen._ Steve helps him fix his sling and roll up his shirt sleeves so the shirt looks a little less like he’s drowning in it, and more like it’s artfully oversized. Steve hands him a hand brush, and he brushes his hair down again. When it’s damp, you can tell how jagged his hair cut is- it looks scruffy.

He takes a look at himself in the mirror hanging on the inside of the cupboard door, and thinks that if his face wasn’t so busted up and his foot and arm wasn’t in bandages, he’d look half way to decent. Steve pats his shoulders and smiles at him in the mirror. If Matt didn’t know any better, he’d say he looked proud.

“Suits you.”

“Thanks.”

“I like it!” Nina says loudly, making sure they definitely know that she is still there, and Matt smiles at her which earns him a megawatt grin. He really likes this kid.

“Nina?” Bucky calls, and soon he’s in the doorway, looking at the three of them. Matt doesn’t get to apologise for having to borrow his clothes before Bucky nods and tells him he looks good.

“Yeah Papa what’s up?” Nina says, and she kinda sounds exactly like Steve.

“Nina, you remember what we said about some grown-ups not knowing about Uncle Tony’s inventions?” He crouches next to her, and she looks at him wearily.

“What about it?”

“I think that maybe today, it might be good to sit in your chair while the foster care people are here.” Her file obviously said about her disability, and people were reluctant to listen to their explanations of Tony’s inventions because if she _could_ walk, then the file was bullshit, or some other fucked up ablest nonsense. Just because Bucky had two hands _sometimes,_ it meant he wasn’t disabled- some reporter had said that to him a while back, when he’d called himself disabled. The guy, who had all four of his limbs attached to his body and was not disabled, according to Pepper’s background checks, said he couldn’t use that term, because he very much had two hands. Bucky had taken off his prosthetic and gone through the rest of the interview luncheon without it, just to prove a point.

“I don’t want to!” Nina says, and she looks like she’s about to cry. She’s not usually so fussy about being in her chair. Bucky looks at Steve a little helplessly, and his fiancé crouches down on Nina’s other side.

“It’s only for a little while, and we can put on a pair of tights so you can get out and play still without irritating your legs, how does that sound?”

“Not good, Daddy!” She yelps, and flings herself into his waiting arms, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He rearranges himself so he’s sitting against the bed, taking deep breaths that move her entire, tiny, shaking body so she’ll calm down a little. Bucky sits next to Steve and rubs a hand over her back. It seemed like the excitement of the past couple of days was just a bit much. Matt eased himself to the floor, on the other side of Steve, and cleared his throat to get Nina’s attention. She did turn her face to look at him, with big, fat crocodile tears running down her cheeks.

“I don’t really wanna wear my sling either,” Matt tells her, sounding as dejected as he possibly can and she frowns at him. “And I’m pretty sure your pops doesn’t wanna wear his metal arm either.”

Nina turns to Bucky and sniffs, giving him a slightly accusatory glare. He shakes his head.

“No, I don’t,” Bucky tells her honestly.

“Then why do we have to?” She turned back to Matt, who just sighed and shrugged.

“Sometimes we gotta pick our battles to make our lives a little easier, saving our energy for the bigger ones later on,” he says diplomatically, just like his mom used to say to him. The first time was when he came home angry and upset that still, after years, not one of the teachers at his elementary school had bothered to learn how to say his name, and he’d gotten into trouble for talking back, for daring to tell the teacher that she was wrong.

Nina gulps and wipes her face with her hands, rubbing her nose with her knuckles.

“People are dumb.”

“Yes, yes they are,” Matt agrees, and Nina wriggles out of Steve’s grasp to stand in front of him. She holds out her hand for him to take, and Matt hoists himself up before taking her tiny hand in his. Her whole hand just about fits in his palm.

“Will you come with me?” She asks, and Matt looks back at Bucky and Steve for confirmation. Both of them nod at him, and he lets Nina lead him to her room, so she can trade her metallic legs for her chair.

“He’s a good kid,” Matt hears Bucky say, and there is no mistaking the pride in his voice.

“Real good kid,” Steve agrees, and then Matt can’t hear them anymore because Nina is explaining to him how her legs work, and how to take them on and off.

Just as she sits in her chair, the doorbell rings, and Matt takes a deep breath. Nina looks up at him with a very serious expression.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

“Yeah, you know what I think you’re right.”

He keeps a hand on one of the handles of Nina’s chair to steady himself more than anything, and the two of them head for the living room. Bucky and Steve are talking to a small woman who’s hair is scraped back into a tight bun, and has glasses balancing on the end of her nose. Nina immediately recognises her.

“Hello, Dr Goldstein!” She says, much cheerier than she had been before. The woman, Dr Goldstein, turns to look at them both. Her eyes go wide when she sees Matt, but she quickly corrects her expression to one of perfect neutrality, and greets the little girl.

“Hello, Nina, how are you?” Her voice is soft and patronising, but Nina ignores it.

“Good. This is Matt,” she says as she reaches around to pat his hand. “He’s going to stay with us!”

“How exciting for you.” Matt thinks she does not sound very excited, but she smiles all the same. Steve makes coffee and Bucky is pulling a tin of biscuits down from their hiding spot at the top of the cupboard. He opens them, and they’re all homemade, despite the branded tin, and each one is beautifully decorated. He offers one to Goldstein, and she says thank you but declines the offer. Bucky leaves them on the table all the same. At some point, he and Steve had changed into shirts, and Bucky had tied up his hair into a neat bun to make themselves look more respectable, Matt supposed. He absentmindedly ran his hand through his own hair- he wondered if Bucky would braid it for him if he asked.

“Dr Goldstein is a psychotherapist,” Nina informs him, pulling him out of his reverie. She trips over the word, and Bucky corrects her, and she repeats it again. “We have sessions with her on Wednesday’s after school,” she continues, and Matt makes a kind of _oh right_ sound. Why did they have to go to therapy, as a family? Like he understood if Steve and Bucky had to go, they were probably dealing with a shit tonne of PTSD and other issues between them, but why Nina? It hit him like a freight train just how little he knew about this family. He’d assumed they’d just adopted Nina from a home, like any other couple would, but that had been a naïve assumption to make. Nothing they did was normal- hell, they were fostering him after a weekend with him.

Bucky mouthed at him _we’ll talk later,_ and then the doorbell rang again. Detective Nichols, and another woman in police uniform came through. The other police woman was young, and had a kind smile. Matt wondered why she hadn’t come before, instead of Nichols. Next was Ruth Irvine, from the foster home and a British man who introduced himself as Teddy, flashing a SHIELD badge for the police officers to see. Finally, in came Dr Banner and a man who Matt presumed was the lawyer. He was scruffy looking, and walked with a cane, and it took Matt a minute to realise that he was blind.

The adults made themselves comfortable around the table, Steve and Bucky not bothering to sit down as they rushed about getting everyone something to drink. Matt and Nina sat on the floor by the coffee table with a sheet of paper that covered the surface completely, and busied themselves drawing. Bucky and Steve had thought it would be good for Matt to stay with them, for Nina to be present, so that Irvine could see them together, and so that Matt felt like he could be part of the conversation. After all, it was his future they were discussing.

Detective Nichols and her partner, Detective Butcher, were the first to speak. They filled everyone in on the details of Friday night, and told the group that they hadn’t managed to get a confession out of Beth Wermwood yet. Detective Butcher was not so good at concealing her anger as she told them that Beth had said Matt had been the one drinking, he’d fallen down the stairs as he’d tried to get into the house from being out with friends.

“Why would he be in pyjamas with one shoe and no coat if he’d been out?” Mr Murdock, the scruffy lawyer, asked, and detective shrugged- she quickly corrected herself and said out loud that she didn’t know.

“Didn’t you take breath samples to show how much alcohol she’d been drinking?” Steve asked, and Nichols frowned.

“We only got to her the day after- the content would have been severely decreased.” Bucky rubbed his temples.

“Are we absolutely sure Wematin wasn’t drinking?” Irvine asked, and Steve and Bucky’s jaws dropped. She looked innocently at them, like what she’d asked hadn’t been incredibly rude. She also said his name wrong. “It’s been known for children in foster care to, how can we put this, act out,” she continued, and Bucky very much looked like he wanted to wring her neck.

“I wasn’t drinking,” Matt said as he hobbled over to the table. Bucky immediately got up and let him take his seat, turning to quickly check on Nina, who was perfectly content humming to herself and drawing. Bucky stood behind Matt with one hand on the back of his chair, ever the protective parent. Irvine gave Matt an insincere smile.

“Of course,” she said, but she sounded like she did not believe him.

“He hadn’t been drinking, you have my professional medical word on that, as well as the word of _Tony Stark_ , _Captain Rogers_ and _Sergeant Barnes_ to testify that,” Bruce told her, his voice colder than Matt thought he was capable of. He made sure to emphasise their names and rank, Matt noticed, and Irvine had the decency to look a little chastised. Not enough for anyone’s liking, however.

“It’ll be easy to undermine her alibi,” Mr Murdock assured the rest of them. “There’s CCTV around that area anyway, and I’m sure there were neighbours watching.”

“There were,” Bucky said, and Detective Butcher made a note of it. Bruce spoke about his injuries, about how Bucky and Steve had cared for him, and Irvine had more to say about that as well.

“Wouldn’t it have been better to wait for a medical professional? Call an ambulance?”

“Ms Irvine, have you ever dislocated your shoulder?” Steve asked tensely, and she shook her head.

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“Well then, you’re going to have to trust me when I say that it is much better to go through with emergency relocation then to be in that much excruciating pain. Bucky and I are both World War II veterans, and are still soldier’s active in the field. We’ve had to do that procedure several times on other soldiers, we are well aware of the consequences and how to carry it out properly.” By the time Steve finished, his nostrils were flaring, and Irvine looked a little scared. _Good._

“They did also immediately find a medical professional when they were sure that Matt was in a safe location,” Detective Butcher piped up, and Irvine sent her a glare that would have made a lesser woman wither under it, but Butcher just smiled at her. Matt liked her a lot.

“It’s a straight forward case,” Mr Murdock said, repeating Detective Nichols’ words from the other day. “I don’t really need to be here- there’ll barely be a hearing, before Wermwood gets put away for abuse, and if I can help it then for racial hate crime as well.”

“I don’t think race has a large part to play in the abuse-” Irvine started, and before everyone could explode, Matt did.

“She cut my hair, Ruth! She cut my hair! Not only does that count as assault but it violates my rights to religious freedom and cultural expression! That is racist!”

“Have you ever thought about becoming a lawyer?” Mr Murdock asks, and everyone just _looks_ at him. He chuckles into the silence. He’s officially the weirdest person Matt has met- and he sits next to Peter in math and that kid is weird as hell.

Nina has stopped humming, and Bruce goes over to talk to her about what she’s been doing. She quickly and easily launches into a loud explanation of the jungle scene she’s depicted, and everyone relaxes a little. Steve gives Bucky a look that seems to be questioning whether it was a good idea to keep her here in the first place, but Matt thinks that if she wasn’t here, all three of them would be having nervous breakdowns.

Irvine decides not to talk again as ‘Call me Teddy’ the SHIELD agent ( _holy shit an actual SHIELD agent)_ and Dr Goldstein take over and discuss Bucky and Steve’s parenting of Nina. Both of them look more than a little uncomfortable as Dr Goldstein talks about therapy sessions and Teddy talks about the mandatory visits he’d done a couple of months ago just to see how Nina was getting along. Dr Goldstein talks about the ‘excellent procedure’ Bucky and Steve have when it comes to keeping Nina away during any ‘episodes’ Bucky has, which, by the way Bucky and Steve’s faces have both paled, are something to be afraid of. She talks about how they’re good at

“Despite Captain Rogers’ and Sergeant Barnes’ unorthodox lifestyle,” Teddy says, and everyone tenses. He realises and quickly rushes to explain himself, “that comes with them both being active military men, Nina is one of the happiest children I’ve come across- which is miraculous, all things considered.” Matt thought about the twinges of Russian in Nina’s accent, and the terms of endearment Bucky used, and the fifty or so children that Steve and Bucky had rescued back in June when it had been all over the news, despite their best efforts to stop it.

_Where was this kid from?_

“-It’s my professional opinion that Steve and Bucky are perfectly suited for fostering, having already been through the adoption process, though it was a little different for them, and I think that if Matt enjoys it here, then he has the right to choose to stay. Steve and Bucky are great parents,” Teddy finishes, smiling gently at him, and Steve is blushing a little at the compliment. Matt turns to look at Bucky, and he’s just looking fondly down at him.

Nina decides that now is a good time to wheel straight into Bucky.

“Papa, carry me, please,” she says, reaching her hands into the air so Bucky can lift her out of her chair. He settles her easily on his hip, and she waves at Steve.

“Hi, Daddy,” she grins, and Steve waves back.

“Hiya, sweetheart.”

“Mr Teddy,” she says, and he grins at her, inclining his head to the side to show that he’s listening. “My dads are great dads,” she tells him, and places a hand above Bucky’s heart. She can probably tell how nervous he is.

“I know, Nina, that’s why I’m recommending them to take care of Matt.”

“That sounds like a _fantastic_ idea,” she tells him, and Irvine is writing things down.

“Yes, about that, I was going to ask if it’s a good idea for you to be dividing your attention, especially with Nina being the way she is,” Irvine says, and Matt clenches his fist. He really hates her- he hated her when he was in foster care, and he hated her now. She’d recently been moved, and made head of the home, and she was just so _removed_ from everyone’s situations he didn’t understand how she could have been put in charge of children’s welfare.

“How am I?” Nina asks, and Irvine looks a bit affronted by Nina’s questioning.

“Well, Nina, you’re in a wheelchair.”

“So?” Nina asks, and she looks at Bucky. “Why does that matter?”

“It doesn’t, love.”

“Well your…family,” Irvine says the word like it pains her, “ _is_ rather _unorthodox,_ Mr Barnes-”

“Sergeant. My Papa’s a sergeant.”  Nina corrects. “And my Daddy’s a captain.”

“Sergeant Barnes,” Irvine grits out, and then continues. “As I was saying, your family is rather unorthodox, and we try to send the children in our care to _stable_ homes-”

“Why would you send children to live with horses?” Nina asks, horrified, and everybody is trying their hardest not to laugh. They’re failing.

“I did not mean that kind of stable-” Irvine says, and she’s evidently losing her patience, which makes it even funnier.

“What does un-orth-dots mean?” Nina asks, and she looks around, opening up the question to the floor.

“It means ‘not normal’ kid,” Bucky tells her, and Nina frowns.

“We did families at school with Miss Jacobs and _she said_ that there’s no such thing as a normal family, because every family is good as long as everyone loves each other very much.” She’s looking at Irvine, who looks murderous. Mr Murdock is full blown belly-laughing at his end of the table.

“Well said, Nina!”

“Thank you!”

“I think, Ruth, that perhaps you are a little bit too _biased_ to be working this case,” Teddy says, and she looks even madder that she’s being corrected by someone half her age. Teddy looks up from the tablet he’s using. “I’m afraid I’ve pulled rank and made myself Wematin’s social worker.” Matt smiles- he said his name right.

“You can’t do that!”

“I can under subsection 2.4 of section C of the rulebook-”

“But-”

“Ms Irvine, Ruth, I shall speak with you privately later,” Teddy tells her, and Irvine looks like she’s sucking on lemons.

“I think that that concludes our meeting,” Mr Murdock says, making a show of looking at his watch. Matt thinks he must be wearing the watch for comic effect and comic effect only, because it does earn him a few laughs. Everyone apart from Irvine thanks Bucky and Steve for their hospitality, and they all wave goodbye to Nina and Matt.

“I’ll be in touch,” Teddy tells them, and he’s the last to leave, even after Bruce, and Bucky and Steve thank him again. “Oh, no need to worry about it- I’ll sort out the guardianship papers for you- not really fostering, you know, but not quite adoption until you’re happy with that, Matt- officially, you’re under the protection of SHIELD now.”

“Oh,” is all Matt can manage.

“I’ll do the whole making fortnightly visits malarkey so we can have a chat and Irvine doesn’t lose her head and higher ups don’t get involved, but otherwise, congratulations on your new home, Matt.”

With that, he shrugs on his jacket, mock salutes Steve and Bucky and leaves. Matt notices that a patch on the back of his jacket says “gender is a social construct” and he has a bag on his shoulder with a badge that says “I don’t even think straight” on it. ‘Call me Teddy’ the SHIELD agent is a cool person.

Soon, it’s just the four of them in the flat once more, and Matt feels like he can breathe again. Nina whispers something to Bucky in Russian, and he laughs.

“No, Nina, I didn’t like her either.” Steve and Matt share a conspiratorial grin.

“Well,” Steve says, “I think that we need some lunch after that- and a celebratory dessert.” Nina and Bucky start whooping, and Matt can’t help but join in.

They make pizza for lunch, from scratch, which is the most fun Matt has had in a while, and Steve promises that they can eat eclairs for dessert which Michael had dropped off yesterday when he and Lindsey brought Nina home.

Just as Bucky pulls out the pizzas from the oven, while Steve and Matt are listening to Nina explain her jungle story which gets more and more elaborate with each retelling, a man walks in through the front door. He’s tall and has his hair shaved close to his head, and it’s only when he speaks that Matt realises that the _friggin’_ Falcon has just walked in through the front door.

“I heard congratulations are in order?” He says, and Nina jumps up off the floor. (As soon as people had left, she’d rolled herself to her room and but her metal legs back on.)

“Uncle Sam!”

“Hey there short stuff!” He says, laughing as Nina plants a kiss on his cheek once he’s picked her up.

“Uncle Sam I have a big brother now,” she tells him, pointing at Matt, who awkwardly waves.

“I can see that,” the Falcon, Sam, teases and he waves back at Matt.

“Steve, man, where do you even find these kids that you’re just allowed to keep ‘em, just like that?”

“Beats me,” Steve says with a shrug, as helping Bucky lay an extra place at the table. “You joining us, Sam?”

“Bucky made pizza?”

“ _We_ made pizza,” Bucky corrects, gesturing to his kids, and Sam nods appreciatively.

“I won’t say no to pizza.”

Sam stays for lunch, and Matt thinks that easily he is the most normal person out of the Avengers- no powers, no intense ability to scare people just by looking at them like Natasha- he just takes the piss out of Steve and Bucky.

“Steve your jokes were always bad, and they got worse when you got a kid, and now you got _two_ does that double the awfulness of your dad jokes?”

“My jokes are good!”

“Steve,” Bucky shook his head at him in a concerned sort of manner, “you laughed at your own ‘ _you must be yolking’_ joke for a solid five minutes this morning.”

“You laughed at it too!” Steve gasps, thoroughly offended.

“That’s really not saying much,” Matt says around a mouth full of pizza, and Steve and Bucky gape at him. Sam gives him a high five, and Bucky’s only retort is _don’t speak with your mouthful._

Sam stays for dessert too, and then Nina wants Matt to read with her, so he does. The adults go suspiciously quiet, and he notices Sam gesturing to his face, so he guesses that Steve and Bucky are explaining everything to him.

Nina’s stopped reading, and is looking at him expectantly.

“Sorry, Nina, I am paying attention-” he starts, but she slams the book shut. _Page 17_ he remembers, just in case. She drops the book and leans up on her knees, so she’s very close to his face.

“Do your bruises still hurt?” she asks, and she places a hand over his heart, just like he’s seen her do with Bucky and Steve before. He swallows thickly.

“A bit, yeah.”

“Yours don’t go away fast, like Daddy’s or Papa’s-” and he’s about to say _that’s because I’m not a super solider_ when she goes “or mine.” He doesn’t really know what to say to that, but it just brings up more questions.

“I’ll be fine! They’ll sort themselves out in a few days.”

She drops the subject and they go back to reading, and he thinks that he likes this. He liked helping the younger ones when he was in the foster home, and he likes helping out with his friends’ little siblings when he goes to their houses after school- he likes having a little sister, or close enough to one. According to a few sheets of paper, they were a family, officially, sure- but he’d only been there a couple of days- and these things took _time._ He was still pretty much a stranger, just living in their house.

“Matty?” Nina asks him when they reach the end of the book.

“Yes, Nina?”

“Are you my big brother now?” He supposes a weekend is quite a lot longer, as a fraction of time spent alive, for a five year old. “Daddy and Papa said you could be my big brother if you and me wanted, and I’d like a big brother- so what about you?”

“Would I like a big brother?” He teases, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“ _No,_ silly, do you want to be my big brother?”

“Yeah,” he says, not even giving a minute to think about it. He would like to be Nina’s big brother; he would like to be part of a family again, even if it feels like betraying his mom, insulting her memory. But she wouldn’t have lead him here, wouldn’t have brought him to this home if she didn’t want him here. “Yeah I would, Little Bird.”

“I’m not a bird!”

“Sure are- you buzz around like one enough!”

“Nope!”

“Yes!”

“Is everything okay back there?” Steve calls, and Nina answers for them both.

“Peachy perfect, Dad!” She says, and it’s a mess of sayings and Matt thinks that Nina is possibly the cutest thing he’s come across. Nina gives him a look that says _challenge me, I dare you_ and he puts up his free hand in surrender.

Sam leaves as it gets late, and Steve makes dinner and Nina insists that all three of them put her to bed. After all three of them have read her a story, and she’s kissed all of them goodnight at least four times, she finally puts her head down and they leave.

Matt insists on helping clear away all of the toys and books and mess, though Bucky and Steve try and get him to just sit and relax, but he needs to keep his hands occupied as he thinks. All too soon, the three of them are sat, flicking nonsensically through the gazillions of available TV channels that they have access to.

“Nina’s Russian, right?” Matt asks, deciding to not bother trying to be stealthy about it. They’d see right through all his tactics.

“Yup,” Steve says, putting _Harry Potter_ on mute, sensing there’s going to be more to this conversation.

“So, what, you pulled an Angelina Jolie and adopted a kid from another country?” Bucky and Steve look at each other in confusion, and Matt is reminded that these two are relics who probably haven’t had time to catch up with everything yet. “How’d you end up adopting her?” He rephrases, and they just give each other a _look._ He wonders if it’s classified information.

“What do you know about HYDRA?” Bucky asks carefully, and Matt can tell that this is a story he’s not gonna be allowed to repeat.

“Bunch of Nazis. Did some freaky experimental shit on you to turn you into the Soldier, tried to rewire your brain, they failed in the long run because you’re better than that and it kinda fell through a while back.” He doesn’t know if that was the right thing to say or not, because Bucky clenches and unclenches his fists a couple of times, even though he’s nodding.

“Basically, yes,” Steve says, and Bucky rubs a hand over his face. “Earlier this year, we were sent on a mission to Russia- fairly standard, check out the creepy HYDRA base, take down whoever was running it, come home.”

“Classic superhero movie plot, got it,” Matt says, and Bucky gives him a tight smile.

“Yep- but we got there and there wasn’t a lot of HYDRA, because like you said, it fell through, but we did find a crazy scientist-”

“Like the one you guys took down in Georgia?”

“The same one,” Bucky says, after a moment, and Matt’s eyes go wide.

“In Russia, he was being paid by HYDRA to try and replicate the serum they used on me, and partly the one they used on Bucky,” Steve says, and Matt feels his stomach lurch. “He’d been testing it on kids with all the conditions I used to have- especially scoliosis.”

“Nina-” Matt says, and Steve nods.

“Nina was the only kid to survive whatever he was doing to them, but she lost the use of her legs for it.”

“The serum did something to her brain,” Bucky continued. “It made the bit controlling her legs give out, to make up for everything else working on overdrive, we think.”

“So she’s super intelligent?” Matt asks, and the two of them nod. “And you adopted her because…” he lets the question trail off, and Bucky is jiggling his leg up and down, and biting his lip.

“Because she thought Bucky was already her dad.”

“What?”

“HYDRA had ordered the scientist to try brainwash her into thinking the Soldier was her dad, to make her loyal to the cause- like the ultimate weapon.” Bucky’s voice was low, and he sounded pained.

“But it didn’t work?”

“She thought I was her dad, yes, but not a lot else worked. She wasn’t loyal to HYDRA or anything, how could she be at the age of four, so yeah- we couldn’t really let her go.”

“So you adopted her. Obviously.”

“Sounds a bit mad when you say it out loud, but yes,” Steve said with a small smile.

“And the incident over the summer?”

“The scientist started working for the Watch Dogs, trying to make Inhuman kids Human. They kidnapped sixty three, including Nina and her classmates, but we found them-” Bucky cut himself off. Matt knew he was about to say all, but they hadn’t. Four kids were taken home in coffins- that much the newspapers had said. 

“That man isn’t going to be a threat anymore,” Steve said darkly, and it didn’t suit him. Matt supposed there were always casualties in war, and if those casualties were people who thought it was okay to torture children, then it was understandable.

Matt sank back into his arm chair, looking at the men on the sofa. They were properly selfless. From what Dr Goldstein had been saying earlier, both of them were probably not ready to have a family, and yet they made it work for this tiny child just because she called Bucky _Papa._ They took him in because, what? Bucky knew what it was like to live in an abusive home? Just because he was there? Because they could? Because they pitied him?

“Not out of pity, no,” Bucky said defensively, and _damn, he really had to stop speaking out loud._ “And not ‘just because you were there’. We took you in for the other reasons and more, and because you want to be here.”

“There are probably tonnes of other kids who would rather be here-”

“There probably are,” Steve cut in, before an argument could escalate. “But they aren’t you. And maybe, hopefully, they’ll find families, who will learn to love them as much as we’ll learn to love you, but they aren’t you- and call it fate or whatever you want to, but it’s you that’s here with us. If you ever don’t want to be, all you have to do is say the word.”

 _We’ll learn to love you,_ Steve had said, with no ‘maybe’ about it. He was so sure of it, so sure of their ability to be a family, so sure of Matt even though he’d only known him a couple of days, and it hurt a little, knowing how much trust they’d placed in him, how much they believed in him. And even then, they were giving him an out if he wanted it, they weren’t trapping him, they were letting _him_ choose. He could feel the weight of it on his chest, how sure of everything they were, despite having been through hell and back over and over again, and he was here, questioning them, being _ungrateful-_

“Matt, Matty you need to breathe, kid, okay?” Bucky was saying, but his voice was far off and quiet and being drowned out by the sound of his own breathing, though when Matt opened his eyes (when had he closed them) he could see that Bucky was right in front of him, which his hands outstretched, ready for Matt to take if he wanted. He reached out blindly, completely missing Bucky’s hand so his open hand landed on his chest. Bucky didn’t pull away, just slowed down his breathing enough for Matt to be able to feel it.

“You need to breathe with me, okay? Deep breath in, and deep breath out,” Bucky was saying, his deep voice slow and reassuring, and easy to follow. It could have been seconds, it could have been hours, but eventually Matt’s heart was beating slower and his breathing was back to normal.

“I’m sorry if what I said was a bit much-” Steve handed Matt a glass of water, and Matt shook his head firmly before chugging the whole glass in one go. When he finished, Steve took the glass from him, and Bucky let him collapse forward into his embrace. Belatedly, Matt realised it was the first actual comforting hug, not one that was for show for the social workers, that he’d had from an adult in _months._ Bucky was rubbing his metal hand over his back, cool even through his shirt, and Matt allowed himself to close his eyes and breathe in time with Bucky.

“Sorry.” It was practically a squeak. He was sixteen; he was too old for this.

“Nonsense,” he heard Steve say, and felt Bucky shake his head. “Everyone panics, it’s alright.”

Eventually, he pulled away from Bucky, and looked at the two of them. Both were frowning with worry, just wanting to check that he was okay.

“Thank you,” he whispers, and both their expressions melt into something must softer.

“Absolutely no problem,” Bucky says, and Steve nods vehemently. It only hits him then, how tired he is, and he’s really glad they aren’t making him go to school tomorrow.

“Do you mind if I head to bed?”

“No, you go, sorry for keeping you up,” Bucky says, and they both stand up as he does.

“Night kid,” Steve says affectionately, and before he can stop himself, he ruffles Matt’s hair, and Bucky says the same but pats him on the shoulder. It’s so _familiar,_ and so careful, making sure that he moves at his own pace, that he thinks if he opens his mouth his voice is going to betray him. They’re standing next to each other, so he just takes a step forward and leans into both their shoulders, resting his head on Steve’s chest. Immediately, they’re both hugging him, and he hugs back as well as he can with one arm before he lets go.

“Night.”

When he gets back to his room, he notices that his phone screen is flashing. He ignores it and changes, goes to brush his teeth and then finally picks it up once he’s lying in bed. There’s got to be about hundred texts, he thinks, as he scrolls through the alerts on his lock screen- more than he can count from Michelle threatening to hunt him down and kill him herself if he doesn’t replay to her texts, a couple from Ned and even one from Peter asking if he’s okay. He hasn’t checked his phone since Friday- which is a ridiculous amount of time. The little battery sign at the top is empty, save for a slither of red, so he plugs in the charger while he mentally prepares himself for telling his friends what’s happened.

He opens the thread to Michelle first, before she makes good on her threat to “kick him so hard he’ll have to give birth to his own nuts.” Sometimes he wonders why she doesn’t have more friends than him, Ned, Peter and Gabby, and then he remembers. No one else puts up with her weirdness like them.

 _MJ:_  
WEMATIN JONES ANSWER YOUR PHONE I HAVE BEEN WORRIED SICK   
(Sent at 19:46)

 _Matt:_  
You are never gonna fuckin beleve what happned to me  
(Sent at 21:51)

Texting well with one hand is a skill he evidently does not possess.

 _MJ:_  
This better be good Jones  
(Sent at 21:51)

_Matt:  
better than good_

_MJ:  
don’t fuck around- I thought she’d nearly killed you _

_Matt:  
I swear t you I ain’t fuckin arund _

_Matt:  
Look I’m gonna call yu cuz it’s a lot to text and 1  arms in a sling_

No less than a three seconds after it said she’d read his text; his phone was ringing with a call.

“So?” Michelle’s voice comes through over the phone, and he can see her _I’m judging you_ face in his mind’s eye.

“It’s a true adventure story-”

“Matt.”

“Drama, plot twists, the lot-”

“ _Matt.”_

“It involves Captain America, the Winter Soldier, and a dislocated shoulder-”

“That was a shitty half-rhyme-”

“Just shut up and listen- but you cannot tell _anyone_.”

“Whatever it is, I got your back. Won’t tell a soul.” He knows she means it.

And so he tells her _everything._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments are precious and I love them! Let me know what you think of the current chapter!


	4. School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt gets used to life in the tower.

On Monday morning, Matt was woken up at the ungodly hour of six in the morning.

“Matty,” Nina was not-quite-whispering, tapping his cheek with her tiny hand. “Matty I have to go to school today.”

Matt blearily opened his eyes to find Nina barely an inch away from his face- she was so close, she’d become a cyclops. He told her as much, which made her giggle so hard she rolled over so she ended up lying next to him, clutching her stomach like he’d told the funniest joke in the world. Her wide grin _almost_ made him forget about the time.

“I’m not going to school today Nina,” he reminded her through a yawn, and the giggles were immediately replaced with a frankly betrayed gaping expression.

“No fair!” She squawked, and that was when Steve popped his head around the door.

“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t wake up Matt until later?” He raised an eyebrow, giving his daughter an unimpressed look; Nina did not shrink under it, but instead pursed her lips.

“But it _is_ later Daddy,” she said with a rather indignant tone, and Matt was suddenly grateful that he had been saved from waking up any earlier. “Also,” Nina interrupted her and Steve’s silent stand off to accusingly point at Matt. “Why doesn’t Matt have to go to school today?”

“Did you have to go to school straight away when you first moved here?” Steve countered, and Nina chewed on her bottom lip.

“Yes?”

“No, you didn’t- nice try. Papa’s made breakfast, c’mon.”

He held out his hand and Nina all but slithered over to Steve, dragging her feet and dropping her weight when he picked her up, as if that would make it any more difficult for him to carry her. Steve still made an ‘oof’ sound, and stumbled like she was heavy.

“You can go back to sleep if you want,” Steve directed at Matt, before leaving with a wriggling Nina and shutting the door behind him. Matt let his head drop back onto the pillows and listened to Nina’s futile arguments as they moved down the hallway.

“But I don’t want to go to school if Matt’s not going!”

“Nina, you like school.”

“Can’t Matty _at least_ come with us in the car?” She whined, and Matt sighed loudly to himself. He should probably leave the apartment at some point, get used to routine again now that his whole life had been uprooted in a spectacularly weird way. Maybe it would help him settle in. He scrunched up his nose and frowned at himself- he sounded like a social worker.

He brushed his teeth and tied up his hair- he wondered if he could ask Bucky to cut it for him so he would resemble himself again, instead of an unkempt troll. He didn’t like how jagged it was- it was a painful reminder of Beth. Cutting his hair so he felt more human was acceptable, right?

The last time he’d cut his hair of his own volition was when his mother died. He’d been in mourning, and cutting his hair had been physical proof that he’d lost her, that he was no longer the same without her. Maybe this time, it could signal a new beginning.

He’d have to think about it.

He trudged his way into the kitchen, absentmindedly noting that he could put a fraction more pressure on his ankle.

“Wasn’t expecting you to be up this early,” Bucky said before Matt even had a chance to announce his presence. Super hearing, he supposed. Nina would never be able to sneak out when she grew up- he would never be able to sneak out, if he ended up staying. Not that he would try.

A mountain of scrambled eggs on toast was put in what he belatedly realised had become his spot at the table.

“Coffee, juice, tea?” Steve asked as he poured mugs of coffee for him and Bucky.

“Juice is good.”

“Juice!” Nina demanded, holding out her mug. Bucky cleared his throat, and she sank back into her seat a little. “Juice, please?” She amended, and Steve grinned as he poured a little more orange into her mug, and then a glass for Matt.

“Matt,” Nina said, drawing out the ‘a’ so his name became a question. He hummed around a mouthful of eggs to show that he was listening. “Will you come drop me off at school today too?”

He swallowed and looked to Bucky and Steve for some sort of guidance. “Errr…” Both of them were just looking expectantly back at him. “Yeah? Sure?”

Nina squealed in excitement, before beginning to describe, in great detail, her classmates and her school whilst Matt finished his breakfast. As he put his plate in the sink, and fought Bucky and Steve about helping to clear up, the doorbell rang. Nina was off like a shot to check the monitor to see who it was.

“It’s Aunty Pepper!” She called as she flung the front door wide open so hard it nearly hit the wall. Matt wondered if she had super strength too, or if it was just excitement translated to the power of momentum.

“Hey there, Nina!” Pepper cooed, before stepping inside and kicking the door shut with her foot- because her arms where filled with what looked like suit carriers. Pepper Potts was exactly as Matt thought she would be- on TV, she was perfectly poised and had a smile that could win over even the toughest of business tycoons- in real life, she was exactly the same, though her smile seemed slightly more sincere.

“I hate to drop by so early, but I have a meeting in about fifteen with India, aren’t time differences fun, and I wanted to drop these off myself and god knows how long this meeting was going to take and I didn’t know what your plans were so I’m here!”

“Morning Pepper,” Steve sounded equally chipper, and he strolled over to kiss her on the cheek.

“Can we get you anything?” Bucky asked, and Pepper gave him a gracious smile.

“No thank you, I’ve already had two cups of coffee this morning- I really just wanted to come and say hello and welcome to Matt.” She turned to him then, and Matt felt slightly stupid as he stuttered out _me?_

“Yes! I heard that you were borrowing Bucky’s clothes and try as I might to help influence the fashion sense of these two, they are quite helpless, so I thought I’d intervene before the situation got too out of hand.” She laughed lightly at Bucky and Steve’s simultaneous, indignant ‘hey!’  Matt couldn’t help but just let his jaw drop.

“You bought me clothes?”

“Yes, if you want them- there’s casual and formal wear, pyjamas, swim suits, the lot, though I didn’t do shoes because it is _always_ better to pick those out yourself-”

“Pepper’s probably got underwear and socks that match with each outfit for you,” Bucky teased, nudging Matt’s elbow with his metal one.

“I do not!” Pepper said in a tone that meant she most definitely did.  Steve and Bucky snicker, and Matt lets himself smile, and then Nina rushes over to Pepper and tugs on her skirt.

“Matty is taking me to school today!”

“Oh how exciting for you!” Pepper does sound genuinely enthused by Nina’s titbit of information- she’s a cool aunt for sure. She chatted with Nina for a little longer, and Bucky, Steve and Matt go through the enormous amounts of clothing Pepper has bought. Everything has been freshly ironed, and is worth more than anything Matt’s ever owned, probably.

“Oh, my would you look at the time,” Pepper said, and Matt’s not sure if he’s ever heard anyone seriously use that phrase who’s not on a TV screen, but there’s a first time for everything. “I hope the clothes are to your liking, Matt- I’ll take you shoe shopping at some point, how does that sound?”

“Great- just, great, thank you so much, for everything,” he stumbled over his words, because he wasn’t quite sure how to express his gratitude adequately- he wasn’t sure if the vocabulary even existed. He noticed Steve give Nina a look like ‘see? Don’t you forget your manners’ out of the corner of his eye, and Nina rolled her eyes.

“You’ll all have to come over for dinner,” Pepper called back over her shoulder as she left the apartment, “I’ll see you soon!”

“We should all go get ready, or we’re going to be late,” Bucky was quick to remind them, and picked up an armful of the clothes that are draped across the back of the sofa where Pepper left them. Steve hurried Nina to her room, and Matt grabbed the rest of the clothes before heading to his bedroom. Something slipped from his grip, and he struggled to bend down and pick it up but he just about managed. It’s a shirt for Nina with a Captain America shield on it. There’s a note attached to the label: _Tony thinks he’s funny- P,_ and it’s the same handwriting that was on the note in his room- he should have said thank you to Pepper for that as well.

He knocks on Nina’s door.

“Pepper bought a present for Nina too,” he says, and hands the t-shirt to Steve, who looks at it and sighs, and then reads the note and sighs harder.

“Ooooh, I wanna wear that one today!” Nina grabs for the t shirt, and Steve just about has time to remove the label before she pulls it over her head.

“Hey Matty do I look like Dad now?” She puffs out her chest and flexes her arms, and it has Steve and Matt laughing.

“Oh my god, who is the _real_ Captain America? I can’t tell!” Matt teases, and Nina giggles before looking at him and gasping in shock.

“Matty you’re still in your pyjama’s! We’ll be late!” She forcibly pushes him out of the room towards his own. “Go, go, _go!”_ She runs back to her own room when Steve calls her to collect her backpack. When Matt gets to his room, Bucky has already started to put the clothes away in the wardrobe, next to his old ones.

“I thought I’d give you a hand-”

Matt interrupts with a snort at the potential pun, and Bucky grins. Matt dumps the rest of the clothes on the bed with less care than he probably should have taken, and his breath hitches at the size of the pile. He didn’t deserve all this.

“What?” Bucky asks, sounding very clearly surprised. Damn, he really had to stop speaking out loud when he didn’t mean to.

“I, it’s just, there’s so much-”

“Because we care about you, Matt. All of us in this tower- Pepper, Tony, Bruce, Natasha, Wanda, Steve, Nina, _me,”_ he lists off the names on his fingers, and emphatically gestures to himself. “We want you to be comfortable; we care about you.” At some point, he’d walked over and put his hands on Matt’s shoulders. Matt doesn’t know where to look, so he focuses on trying to match his breathing to Bucky’s. It helps; he feels less like the world is pressing down on him.

“You deserve all of this and more, kid, you got that?”

“But why?” His question is barely a whisper as he looks at the ground. Bucky sighs, and gives Matt’s shoulders a gentle squeeze so he’ll look up at him.

“Because you’re you, and you’re special, and you deserve all of this just as much as the next kid if not more, _especially_ because you’re grateful for it, and don’t take it for granted.”

Matt gulped and nodded. He supposed if he repeated Bucky’s words enough, maybe he’d believe it, so he made an effort to memorise them. Bucky let his hands drop to his sides.

“Feeling a little better?”

Matt shrugs. “It’s a lot to get used to.”

Bucky runs a hand through his hair and nods. “It sure is- took me a long while to accept that this was how life was gonna be, that people honestly do care, but it gets easier.”

“Easier said than done,” Matt mumbles, and Bucky laughs.

“Most things are, kiddo,” he says as he walks to the door. “Now you better get ready soon, or the little princess is gonna drag you out the house in your pyjamas.” Bucky carefully shuts the door behind him, and Matt is left alone with the mountain of clothes. He shakes his head and looks at the things in the cupboard- Bucky’s shirt is still there.

Steve is helping Nina put on her shoes, and Bucky is waiting with Matt’s coat by the door when he eventually appears. Steve looks up at Nina’s exasperated _finally!_ He turns and gives Bucky a soft smile when he notices that Matt has chosen to wear his shirt instead of anything else. He’s wearing a new pair of jeans, which seem to fit slightly better, and his own combat boots because his trainers won’t fit over the bandage on his foot, though because his arm is still in a sling the laces are undone.

“You’re gonna trip over,” Steve mumbles, as he swivels on his knee from Nina to Matt, and quickly ties the laces. Matt flushes with embarrassment, but no one laughs or comments on his incompetency, and soon enough they’re out the door and in the lift down to the garage.

Nina races ahead towards an old car that must have gone out of production in the fifties, but still looks oddly sturdy. Parked right next to it is a motorbike emblazoned with the Avengers’ logo. Matt stands back for a moment, and watches Steve strap Nina into her booster seat as Bucky starts the car- they look like ridiculously hipster dads with their old car, Steve in a leather jacket and Bucky with his coat collar turned up against his neck. He supposes, in the clothes he’s wearing, he fits right in, for once.

It takes a lot less time than he thought it would to get to Nina’s school, and she grabs his hand and eagerly drags him to her classroom. They’re pushing it time wise, evidently, because all the other kids seem to be there already.

“Hello!” Nina calls out, her tiny fingers gripping Matt’s like her life depended on it. All the children turn at the sound of her voice, as do one or two of the adults. There’s a kid with her hair in afro-puffs and shimmery wings- Tia, Nina had said that Tia had wings. There’s a little boy with pale scars indenting his dark skin on his face and arms- Danny. The blonde girl with vacant eyes is Susie, the freckly kid is Charlie the shapeshifter, Miguel has gills, Violet “looks Indian even though her mummy is white and that’s called _mixed race_ ”, and Thomas is the Chinese boy wearily eyeing Matt from the corner. Nina had shown him pictures and explained their powers in the car. Matt remembered being excited for school.

“Hi Nina!” Danny waves excitedly, and he’s looking at her with such adoration that Matt melts a little bit. Steve has gone to chat to Nina’s teacher, and he’s gesturing at Matt so he suspects that he’s explaining the whole situation. Bucky is chatting away to a woman with a shaved head who’s half paying attention to him and half watching Danny, so he supposes that’s his mom.

“This is my big brother Matty,” Nina tells everyone with one of her megawatt smiles, and Susie’s whole face lights up.

“Daddy I was right!” She squeals, and a lanky man with glasses half the size of his face rushes over to give her a hug. The other children do not seem too bothered by the fact that Susie somehow predicted his presence, or rather existence, and instead all of them, apart from Thomas, greet him with cheerful smiles. Most of them go back to what they were doing after they’ve finished ogling, but Thomas shyly comes over to them. Nina’s dragged Matt across the classroom to show him the reading corner.

“Were you rescued too?” Thomas asks, and his gaze is flickering between Matt’s bandages and visible bruises, but he never makes eye contact.

“Um,” Matt thinks how he’s going to respond for a moment, and Thomas seems very focused on the bruise on his jaw. “Yes, I was,” he settles on. Thomas nods and doesn’t say anything for a while, so Nina, who was watching the entire exchange with rapt attention, fills the silence showing them her favourite book.

“So you must have powers too,” Thomas states blandly, as if he was commenting on the weather, not looking up from where he’s intently reading the titles on the book spines. Nina stops talking and just gawps at Matt.

“Errr…” Matt hesitates, and Nina drops his hand.

“You didn’t tell me!”

Bucky is suddenly at their side, a soothing hand placed in the middle of Nina’s back.

“Nina what’s going on kiddo? That was pretty loud for an inside voice,” he nods at Thomas, who’s shrunk away from them. Nina looks extremely guilty, and whispers _sorry,_ and she signs something which Matt guesses also means sorry _._ Thomas just nods, though he looks a little tearful.

“Matty didn’t tell me he had Inhuman powers!” She points an accusatory finger, and Matt’s shoulders immediately tense, like it’s a reflex. He’s gotten so used to keeping secrets, he’s forgotten to tell her, and his brain has quite caught up with the fact that he’s in a safe place. Bucky gives him a look that very obviously reads _the ball is in your court._ He doesn’t have to say a word if he doesn’t want to. He takes a deep breath and rocks back from his crouching position so he can sit on the floor next to her, but he lands harder than expected and winces.

“You okay?” A voice asks from behind him, and Matt turns to see Charlie biting his lip as his hair turns an alarmed shade of red. Danny is frowning at him like he doesn’t approve of his _omission of the truth_ that he told Nina.

“Yeah I’m alright,” he says to Charlie, and then turns to Nina, and pats the ground next to him.

“Hey, Nina, I actually have something to tell you.” She does sit next to him, though not as close as she would have five minutes ago. Bucky is crouched behind her, with Thomas holding onto his metal arm and stroking over the plate ridges like it’s a stim toy. He gives Matt an encouraging smile, and Matt notices out of the corner of his eye that Steve and Danny’s mom are the only parents left in the room.

“I am actually Inhuman,” he confesses, looking straight at Nina, and his voice breaks a little at the last minute. It’s a tough admission to make, though surrounded by a bunch of first graders, he feels safer than he has, well, ever, when showing off his powers.

“What can you do?” Nina is more intrigued than affronted now, thankfully, as she shuffles closer to him, and he breathes a sigh of relief. He looks up at Bucky, and then Steve for a fraction of a second, and then holds his hands out in front of him, palms facing up. He squints and concentrates hard on imagining his hands fading out of visibility. Nothing happens for a frustratingly, if not embarrassingly long time. He squeezes his eyes shut and makes fists, and not three seconds later, there’s seven tiny gasps and a quiet _what happened?_ He opens his eyes and looks down, and sure enough his hands are slowly fading back into visibility. He looks up to see Nina’s amazed expression.

“You’re like Violet!” Nina says, and she’s practically buzzing with excitement.

“I can’t do that!”

“Not _you_ Violet, _the Incredibles_ Violet! She can go invisible!”

“Cool,” Susie whispers, and then the teacher clears her throat.

“Alright children it’s time we start for the day, don’t you think?”

She’s met with groans, but all of them head over to sit at their desks. Bucky helps Matt up, and Steve holds the door for the three of them to leave before Nina can notice and kick up a fuss.

Danny’s mom is sorting out something in the boot of her car, which is right next to theirs when they get to the car park.

“How are you, Makayla?” Steve asks, and she gives him a tired smile.

“Just great- you must be Matt,” she turns to him and holds out her hand for him to shake, and he awkwardly does so. They chat for a short while before Makayla has to rush off to work, and soon enough, he, Bucky and Steve are back at the tower. Bucky has to leave and do something he can’t openly discuss in front of Matt, so it’s just him and Steve left in the apartment.

“That was pretty brave, what you did,” Steve tells him as he helps Matt undo his laces and take off his coat- which he places right next to the shoes he toed off and hangs up on the coat peg next to his like it’s always been like this.

“I dunno, apparently I got stage fright,” Matt tries to joke, and Steve looks up at him inquisitively.

“You use your mind to control it, right? Your powers, and which part you can make disappear?” He sits on the sofa, and Matt takes a seat next to him.

“Yeah, I guess? At first, after I went through the whole transition, it was really feelings based- like as soon as I felt fear or discomfort, I’d disappear- but I realised I had to fight that ‘cause it could get me into _a lot_ of trouble, so I learned to keep it under wraps- but now it’s really hard to make it happen.”

Steve strokes his chin, running his hand over his stubble as if it was a proper beard. He’d forgotten to shave that morning.

“I know it’s not the same,” Steve began, and Matt had the terrible thought that Steve was going to say something benign like _have you tried running_ or _you should try yoga!_ “but Wanda has magic,” Matt forces himself to relax just a little, “which she controls using her mind, so it might be an idea to talk to her?”

“Wanda,” Matt deadpans. “ _The_ Scarlet Witch?”

“Or,” Steve stutters, “Or we could get into contact with Daisy Johnson, whoever you’d prefer as a tutor.”

Matt gaped at him- he’d just suggested getting _Quake_ or _Scarlet Witch_ as a tutor, as if it was normal like he needed help with his chemistry homework- he probably did, but Steve would suggest Dr Bruce Banner, probably.

“I mean I guess Wanda would be more convenient,” Matt mused, and Steve’s whole face lit up indicating that he’d clearly missed the sarcasm. Matt was about to point out his sarcasm when the doorbell rang, and Steve bounded over to answer it with energy that could rival Nina’s. Matt can’t see who it is past Steve’s massive shoulders, but he doesn’t have to wait long to find out.

“Wanda!” Steve sounds equal parts excited and confused.

“You think very loudly, Steven, as much as I try to block it out you are always breaking down the walls,” She sounds more bemused than anything else.

“Wanda, let me introduce you to Matt,” Steve finally moves out of the way and let’s Wanda in, and shuts the door behind them. Matt would think that after the past three days of meeting Avengers, he’d be used to it by now, but he still has to actively pick up his jaw off the floor as Wanda breezes past Steve to talk to him.

“How delighted I am to meet you in person,” she says with a thick accent that drips like honey, and Matt really hopes she is not reading his mind and looking straight into his infatuation, but by the slight smirk on her face, he must be thinking really loudly.

He flushes and manages to stutter out a _hi_ before Steve interrupts with a sympathetic smile and offers Wanda some tea- he must be really damn obvious. When he’s sure his face has turned back to a normal colour, he hobbles over to the kitchen counter to join them.

“Tea?” Steve asks.

“Please.”

“So, Matt,” Wanda turns to him, and he focuses on the tiny scar on the bridge of her nose instead of looking her in the eye, because if he does he’s going to embarrass himself even more, but he’s sure she already sees straight through his tactics. “Steve says you are Inhuman?”

“He can make himself disappear,” Steve says undeniably proudly as Matt shrugs in a way that is far too _Danny Zuko_ for his own liking- why can’t he just chill, for once?

“Well that _is_ cool,” Wanda says, sipping on her tea that Steve just poured.

“I’m struggling a bit though,” Matt admits, looking down at his piping hot tea. “I need to learn to control it better- it takes a lot of effort at the moment.”

“If you should like me to, I would be happy to help,” Wanda says with a sincere smile, and Matt grins shyly back. Steve tells Wanda of their adventures this morning, and she listens carefully and laughs in all the right places before her phone beeps urgently. She checks it and her eyes go wide. She apologises profusely to Matt and Steve as she hastily finishes her tea, and practically flies out of the apartment with a promise to text either Steve or Bucky and set up tutoring sessions.

It hits Matt like a truck that there is a high possibility that when any of the adults in this tower ‘went to work’, they might not come back. The horror must show on his face, because Steve shifts to sit next to him and quietly asks what’s wrong.

“How are you not scared?”

“Pardon?”

“Every time your friends, your _fiancé,_ goes off to work, they could not come home again.”

“I know they will,” Steve says with a shrug, and he barely takes a second to think of his answer.

“How can you be so sure?” Matt says, and the disbelief in his voice is evident, even to his own ears.

“Because we have people to come home to,” Steve tells him very seriously, and he’s looking at Matt in such a way that Matt can’t even bring himself to blink in case he ruins the moment. The way Steve talks sounds like he’s including Matt in the list of people to come home to, and it makes his chest tight.

“I, um, I have homework to do-”

“Of course! If you need any help-”

“Let me guess, ask Dr Banner?”

“Or Tony, yeah,” Steve says a little sheepishly, picking up on the sarcasm this time.

Half way through his chemistry homework, Matt wonders if he really should go to Dr Banner- but he reminds himself that there is probably important Avenger-ing to be done that he probably shouldn’t interrupt. Steve pops his head around the door what feels like every three minutes, asking Matt if he needed a snack, or a water bottle- if he’d taken a break.

“You’ve been working for a while- you sure you don’t need a break?”

“It’s been half an hour Steve, I’m good.”

“What do you wanna eat for lunch?”

“Don’t- it’s okay I can make lunch myself.”

“Wematin,” Steve emphatically pronounces every syllable of his name in a tone that suggests he should not be argued with. When he thought about it, Matt had had more meals cooked for him in the few days he’d been here than he had in the past three months living with Beth.

“Excuse me?” Steve loudly interrupted his train of thought. He really had to stop speaking out loud when he didn’t mean to.

“I, err-”

“Let me get one thing straight,” Steve tells him, drawing up to his full height like a protective mama bear, “Bucky and me are the parents in this house, we do the providing- you cook for yourself _for fun,_ not out of necessity, okay?”

Matt just nods, and Steve seems satisfied and his shoulders sink a little. “Soup and sandwiches okay with you?”

“Sounds great.”

They eat together, and Matt tries to help with the washing up but Steve sends him off to go and study, and soon enough he’s back in Matt’s room asking if he’ll be okay if he’s left alone for a few minutes whilst Steve picks up Nina.

“Or, you know, you can come with?”

“I really have to get this essay done-”

“It’ll be a good break!”

“Steve,” Matt says, and if someone had said to him last week that he had the ability to make Captain America look chastised, he would have laughed in their face- both for the oddly specific thought and because that was how the literary phrase went.

“I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Matt nods and tells him to go before he’s late, and Steve tells him if he needs anything, Jarvis is always around.

Nina was delighted to find that Matt was at home when she bounded into his bedroom, but her excitement was quickly curtailed by worry.

“You weren’t playing all by yourself _all day_ , were you?”

“No- I had homework to do, don’t you worry, Little Bird,” he teased as she hugged him close, and she sighed at the nickname but did not fight against it. She dragged him out of his room to the kitchen for a snack, and Steve places bowls of fruit and yoghurt in front of each of them.

“Where’s Papa?” Nina asks, and somehow she’s managed to already get yoghurt on her nose, which Steve wipes off with his thumb.

“What day is it Nina?” Steve asks, and Nina looks at the calendar stuck up on the fridge, which has red crosses through each of the days already gone by.

“Monday,” she sighs, and then turns to Matt, “Monday is therapy day for Papa, Wednesday is therapy day for Dad and then all of us, and Friday is a short session.”  Her tone goes from eager-to-inform to bored in five seconds flat, and then her expression changes again to one of curiosity as she studies Matt.

“Does Matt have to come on Wednesday’s and Friday’s?”

Steve looks a little stumped as his gaze flits between Nina and Matt. “Um, I’ll call Dr Goldstein.”

Bucky comes home about an hour later, looking bone tired, but he smiles and catches Nina as she jumps into his arms, and buries his nose in her hair like he’s trying to breathe her in. It’s only when he comes over to give Matt a pat on the back that Matt is close enough to realise he’s been crying. It’s quite a jarring sight.

Steve cooks dinner whilst Bucky sits with Nina and listens to her talk about school and helps her with her homework, and Matt brings his books through and curls up in an armchair to do his history reading.

“Hey Papa?”

“Yes, _lastochka?”_ Bucky says through a yawn, and Nina grumbles something about being a little girl, not a bird, but she seems amused all the same.

“Charlie bought in his baby sister for show and tell one time, so can I bring in Matty for show and tell?” Matt snorts, Steve guffaws and Bucky chuckles, much to Nina’s chagrin. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, Little Bird,” Matt is the one who sobers up fastest, and Nina is looking at him like she doesn’t trust him. “It’s just, um-”

“When is show and tell?” Bucky asks, and Nina turns to her Papa.

“Friday.”

“Darn,” Steve calls from the kitchen, and he slaps his knee. Matt has to fight the urge to roll his eyes, but Bucky succumbs. Nina is pointedly ignoring both of them in favour of Steve. “Matt has school that day which he can’t miss, isn’t that right Matt?”

“Oh, yeah, um, school, Friday’s a school day, sorry kiddo.”

“Darn,” Nina sags in disappointment, and Matt can’t help but feel a little bad.

“Hey- how about we take a photo and print it out, and you can take that to school?”

Nina wriggles out of Bucky’s lap and over to Matt, and the two of them take a slew of selfies with different filters and pulling silly faces, which Matt sends to Bucky who prints them all out.

Steve gets Matt and Nina to lay the table, and they eat together, looking over the photos. Bruce rings the doorbell just as they finish up, and checks Matt’s various scrapes and bruises.

“That sling can come off tomorrow, just no heavy lifting or anything okay?”

“Does it look like I do any heavy lifting?”

“You’ll be able to carry me!” Nina grins, and Matt smirks.

“Dr Banner said no heavy lifting, you lump,” he teases, and Nina gasps.

“I’m not heavy!”

“You sure about that?”

“Dad!” Nina calls out in a voice universally known to indicate snitching, “Matty’s teasing me!”

“Somebody has to!” Bucky calls back from the kitchen, and Nina scrunches up her nose.

“You’re not Dad!”

“He’s _a_ dad!” Steve defends, and Bucky winks at him in a _I knew you got my back_ sort of way.

“It’s not the same!” Nina whines, making everyone laugh.

Bruce watches the whole exchange with a resigned, yet fond expression and shakes his head.  He leaves not long after, and Bucky and Steve send Nina and Matt to bed relatively early. Matt may be eleven years older, but after the six o’clock start this morning, his body is pretty much solely working to keep him awake by eighty thirty in the evening.

 

Tuesday is much the same as Monday in a half routine half all-of-this-is-new kind of way- he goes with Bucky and Steve to drop Nina off, they have a visitor (Natasha, this time, who is unbelievably cool) and then Matt goes to get on with his homework. He gives in and goes to ask Bruce for help, and the genius scientist is all too happy to teach him. Wanda comes over for lunch, and she then takes him down to the training rooms to for a tutoring session- though they agree on Thursday’s after school, for the coming weeks.

The training rooms are large and every piece of equipment seems to be unnecessarily reinforced.

“Your fathers go through punching bags like it is cotton candy,” Wanda explains as they walk towards the crash mats.

“They’re not my-”

She stops him talking with a look. “Give it time.”

She asks him to show what he can do, how much of himself he can make disappear in one go, and Matt is glad he changed into tracksuits because he is sweating like a pig barely fifteen minutes in.

“Your clothes do not disappear with you?”

“No.”

“A challenge to keep Tony occupied, I should think.”

For the rest of the hour, because Wanda thinks any time more than that will cause extreme fatigue, she wants him to practice clearing his mind and focus on his breathing, to see if he can feel where the epicentre of his power is. After thirty nine minutes, he still can’t.  

“Seems like a bit of a waste of time,” he mutters, and Wanda gives him a look that causes him to feel more than a little ashamed of his insolence.

“I wish I had been given the luxury of this waste of time to get used to my power,” she tells him, and Matt actively does not think about how much his whole body ached after the first time he disappeared. At least his power was contained, and not pulled and projected from his body.

“Again,” Wanda commands, and he actively tries to stop himself from thinking.

By the time he gets back, Nina is already home and before the door even shuts behind him, she launches into a very detailed description of her day. She continues to talk through the bathroom door as he showers, and does not seem to stop or let anyone else get a word in edge ways until dinner.

“So,” Eventually she pauses to breathe, “How was your day?”

“I went to see Dr- I mean Bruce,” he corrects himself half way through. Bruce had shaken his head at the formality. “For tutoring-”

“You should get Uncle Tony to help with science too,” Nina tells him like she’s imparting the wisdom of the universe to him, and Matt just raises an eyebrow.

“Why’s that?”

“Uncle Tony likes helping,” she says around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “And he doesn’t like it when people pick favourites and he’s not a favourite.”

 

Wednesday comes a little too quickly for Matt’s liking. Back to school nerves, he supposes. For once, he wakes up to complete quiet save for the gentle pattering sound of a shower running- it’s probably Steve. He relishes the fact that he has the use of both his hands as he makes his bed. His shoulder is sore, but it’s easy enough to ignore.

He doesn’t bother getting dressed yet, it’s barely seven (the most surprising thing is that Nina isn’t awake yet) and limps to the kitchen. He sets about brewing some coffee like he’s on autopilot, and half way through filling the pot he realises he doesn’t need any- he continues what he’s doing for Bucky and Steve anyway. He wonders if caffeine actually has any effect on their super soldier metabolisms, or if it’s just out of habit or for the taste.

A loud _thump_ causes him to turn around with break neck speed. He had thought he was the only one awake-

“Peter?”

Peter Parker, as in his friend Peter Parker, seemed to be mid-creep, though Matt wasn’t quite sure which direction he was meant to be going in. Peter didn’t seem to know either. He quickly straightened up and ran a hand through his hair, like he was trying to be as non-suspicious as possible. Matt frowned.

“What are you doing?”

“I…errr…I came to check up on you!”

“You what now?”

“Yup! You said you were in a bad way so I thought _huh, I should go and check up on my friend Matt,_ so that’s what I’m doing!” He was stretching the collar of his hoody like he was too hot and this was an old movie filled with exaggerated actions for comedic effect. It does give Matt the opportunity to notice that he’s wearing a red and blue skin tight turtle neck under his t-shirt, under his hoody.

“I didn’t tell you that I live here,” Matt says slowly, though it kind of sounds like a question. His sleep addled brain is not the sharpest, but he’s pretty damn sure he only told MJ what was happening with his location.

Peter looks utterly panicked. “I, err, found you on the snapchat map?” Unlikely, since Matt had been sure to turn his off, so he just narrows his eyes at Peter.

“How’d you get in here?” _How far are you going to go with your lie?_

“The doorman let me in!” That, to his credit, does seem to be the truth.

“Why?”

“Because…because  he knows we’re friends?” It would have been convincing if he wasn’t stuttering and hadn’t framed his answer as a question. Matt told him that much. Peter sagged, and his eyes were darting around the room for escape routes- though he seemed keen on the window which seemed a little excessive and over dramatic to Matt.

“Damn, you got me, you see, I actually live here too,” he says, and awkwardly, collapses onto the couch and hesitantly puts his feet up on the table like it’s a natural thing for him to do. Matt notices he’s toed off his shoes, and that his socks are the same red and blue of his turtle neck, like he’s wearing a skin tight onesie.

“Parker get your feet off my coffee table,” Bucky grumbles, and both boys turn to look at him. He’s already dressed for the day, and has his metal arm on, but his hair is damp and loose and hiding half of his face so they can only see half of his scowl.

“Sorry Mr Barnes,” Peter all but yelps, and is quick to stand up again. Bucky cards his fingers through his hair to push it out of his face and smiles at Matt when he realises that the coffee has already been made.

“Thanks, kid,” he says as he pours himself a cup, and Matt can’t help but grin a little.

“So, Mr Barnes, I was wondering-” Peter draws attention to himself once more, and he’s trying but failing to casually lean against the fridge now.

“If you could have waffles for breakfast?” Bucky asks, looking entirely unimpressed.

“Yeah!” Peter enthusiastically replies, ignoring Bucky’s tone. Bucky grumbles something unintelligible that could have possibly been about _super teenage metabolisms_ but Matt can’t be sure.

“Doesn’t that aunt of yours feed you?” Bucky grouches as he gently nudges Peter out of the way so he can get to the fridge.

“She does, but I’m still hungry and your waffles are the best-”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Parker,” Bucky says sternly, and at that moment, Steve walks in.

“I don’t know,” he says cheekily, walking over to Bucky, leaning down to kiss his cheek, “I think it depends on who’s doing the flattering.”

“Ew,” Peter says, and Bucky and Steve both turn to him looking more than a little offended. Matt doesn’t realise that he’s subconsciously stood himself slightly in front of Steve and Bucky until he has to turn his head to look back at them. _He’s_ trying to protect _them, a pair of super soldiers-_ his brain scoffs at his own ridiculousness.

“PDA much?” Peter quickly amends when he realises how his comment could be taken. Matt rolls his eyes.

“Technically not public, considering _you’re_ the one in _their_ house,” he points out, and Peter flushes as red as the clothes under his clothes.

“You got me there,” he awkwardly chuckles, and Steve and Bucky are talking in hushed whispers about…something.

“You boys get yourselves something to drink, yeah? I’m going to check on Nina,” Steve announces before striding out of the room. Matt makes his way over to the fridge.

“Want some juice?” He asks Peter, who is trying to decide where to sit at the breakfast bar, “you must be pretty warm with all those layers on,” he adds flippantly, and even though Peter is standing still, somehow he manages to trip over his own feet. Bucky snorts.

“Yeah, well, you never know what the weather is going to be like outside so best to be prepared, my Aunt May always says-”

“Morning,” Nina yawns as she walks into the kitchen with Steve not far behind. She immediately goes for Matt, and wraps her arms around his legs in a tight hug. When she’s done, she turns to Peter.

“Hi Spidey,” she grins, and Matt looks between the two of them. Peter’s eyes have gone very wide.

“Spidey?”

“It’s a nickname!” Peter says and Steve chastises Nina.

“Remember what we said about _names_ Nina?” The question is loaded and she turns to her dad with wide eyes.

“Oops.”

Matt looks at Nina, who’s twiddling her thumbs. Spidey. Clothes under his clothes. _Red and blue clothes_ under his clothes. The _window_ seemed like a decent escape route. Ned said that Peter _knew-_

“Ah! I got it, you must be here for your Stark Internship, right?” Matt asks with a snap of his fingers, and Peter relaxes.

“Yes! That’s right! Stark internship! Of course!”

Matt does not miss Bucky’s snort as he whisks the waffle mixture.

“Yeah, tell me about that? It’s probably something like _web design,_ right?”

Steve is shuddering with the effort it’s taking to not laugh. Peter is opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

 “Can’t we just tell him?” Nina groans, and gesticulates wildly at Matt. “He guessed already!”

“Nina-” Bucky warns at the same time Matt shrugs.

“Peter’s the Spider-Man.”

“Peter’s the Spider-Man,” Nina grumbles, though it sounds like she’s saying _spooder_ rather than _spider._

“Me?” Peter scoffs. “Spider-Man? I have never seen a spider in my _entire life-”_

“Just a really dedicated fan, huh? With the costume and all?” Matt deadpans, and Peter gulps.

“Yup! That’s me! Really dedicated fan!”

“Right.” Matt draws out the vowels, he very much does not believe that Peter is just a fan, and Nina rolls her eyes.

Bucky is plating up waffles when Jarvis’ voice fills the room.

“Mr Stark says if you do not come to his lab immediately, he won’t see you because you’ll be late for school, Mr Parker.”

“Ah fu-”

“Language!” Bucky, Steve and Nina say at the same time, and Matt chuckles around a mouthful of breakfast. Bucky is quick to put four waffles in a tiffin box and hand it to Peter.

“For Tony as well,” he gives as an explanation, and Peter grins.

“Thanks Mr Barnes!”

“Go, Parker, or you’ll be late,” Bucky says, pointing his spatula at the door, and Peter leaps across the apartment, shouting _byes_ and _thank you’s_ as he goes. He slams the door with unnecessary force.

“If the paint cracks he can re-do it,” Steve says to himself, more than anyone else in particular.

They finish their breakfast in peace, before Steve and Bucky practically push Matt and Nina out of the kitchen to go and get ready for school. Matt braves the new side of his wardrobe yet again, but sticks with his combat boots.

Soon he’s in the back of the car with Nina in the booster seat next to him, and she’s loudly singing along to a song on the radio that he cannot remember the name of for the life of him.

They drop off Nina first, and she _begs_ for Matt to come into school to say hi to her friends, but Steve and Bucky tell her a firm _no_ because Matt has to head to school as well. She kisses the three of them goodbye, and it takes less time than he thought it would for them to get to his school. Steve and Bucky both get out of the car to wave him goodbye.

“Do you want us to come and pick you up?” Bucky looks genuinely concerned. Matt feels like a seventh grader on the first day of school- he can’t remember the last time anyone dropped him off.

“It’s fine-”

“I’ll come pick you up, and Bucky can get Nina,” Steve decides, and Matt can’t bring himself to argue. “Oh! And Pepper already emailed the school about your address change and everything, so don’t worry about wasting your breaks doing that-” Steve rambles on. Matt had been wondering how all of this worked when it came to official school documents. On the form where it says place of residence was he just supposed to write ‘Avenger’s Tower’? It didn’t seem right- probably because he’d get detention for messing around.

“You’ve got everything?” Bucky asks, possibly for the seventeenth time but Matt lost count after nine.

“Lunch money!” Steve all but yelps, and digs into his jeans pocket for his wallet. He hands Matt far too many bills, and when Matt tries to hand them back, he refuses.

“Thank you,” he mumbles and stuffs the money into his own wallet.

“Call us if you need anything, okay?” Bucky says sincerely, and Matt nods. Both of them pat his shoulders before getting back into the car. They seem loathed to leave him, which is ridiculous.

“Have a great day,” Bucky says with all the cheer of a fifties movie mom, and Matt rolls his eyes.

“I will- I’ll see you guys later!”

They only drive off when he’s nearly at the doors.

He slides into his seat next to MJ in homeroom.

“So he lives,” she mumbles, but doesn’t even look up at him from her drawing. It’s Ned, as far as he can tell.

“He does.”

Peter practically trips into his seat- how the dude is a supposedly co-ordinated superhero, Matt will never know.

“You’re back!”

“Long time no see,” Matt smirks, and Peter flushes.

The rest of the day goes by fairly easy, until lunch. He’s sat across from MJ, she’s reading and he’s texting Bucky that _yes, he’s fine._

“Yo, is it true you live with Captain America now?” Ned asks, sitting down with such force that the whole table shakes.

“Dude shut up!” Peter hisses, and Ned stumbles through an apology before turning back to Matt expectantly.

“You _told_ him?” Matt says accusingly to Peter, who has the decency to look sheepish. “I do not need this to get out, c’mon man Flash already has enough ammo on us I don’t need to be labelled delusional as well-”

“I can keep secrets I _swear,”_ Ned tells him, and MJ makes a soft ‘uh _huh’_ sound into the pages of her book. “Like I’ve been keeping it secret for ages how Peter is-”

“Dude!” Peter cries, slapping his hand over Ned’s mouth. The two of them really needed to work on their subtlety.

“Peter is Spiderman, we all knew that,” MJ drawls, and she only looks up when she imagines the sound of jaws hitting the floor. “We all knew that, right? Not just me? Okay cool.” She goes back to reading her book. Ned eyes her wearily.

“Yeah just don’t say anything, alright?” Matt isn’t beyond begging, and Peter and Ned seem to have enough going on that they know this needs to stay a secret.

“Yeah we all got secrets, no one’s gonna say a word.” MJ actually looks up and stares each of them down until they agree.

“Not a word.”

When school does finally end, and Matt walks out of the building with MJ at his side, he’s a little surprised to see Steve in the car park- he knew he’d said he’d come, but he was _actually there._ Steve does the awkward parent wave and all, despite the fact that he knows Matt can see him because he’s walking towards him.

“Hi Steve,” Matt says.

“Does your friend need a ride?” Steve asks, and Matt had momentarily forgotten that MJ was with him.

“Oh, um-”

MJ looks up at Steve from her phone. She obviously recognises him, if not his voice, and obviously she knows who he is because Matt told her, though the only indication of her surprise is a small smile- which is unusual enough in itself.

“I’m alright getting the subway, Mr Rogers, but thanks for offering,” she says politely, and Matt looks at her like she’s grown another head.

“Really it’s no trouble- Michelle, is it?” Matt narrows his eyes at Steve and his out-stretched hand. Did he do background checks on his friends? MJ doesn’t even blink and shakes his hand like she’s totally great at social interactions.

“My friends call me MJ,” she beams, and Matt is pretty sure he’s been pulled through a portal to another dimension. Steve opens the back door for both of them, and they climb in. Matt notices Ned and Peter watching them when he looks out of the window, and Peter and Steve give each other curt nods before Steve squashes himself into the car. Ned looks like he might faint. 

“So where’s home for you, MJ?” Steve asks, and she rattles off her address. Steve chats to them the whole way, asking about their days and what they did like any regular parent would. MJ talks enough for both of them, and Matt is content to sit and watch Queen’s go by.

He thinks that maybe, just maybe, he could get used to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!


	5. Feels Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days in the life as Matt gets used to living with the Barnes-Rogers'.

Matt had been here eight days. Eight days was, in the grand scheme of the universe, barely even a fraction of a millisecond, but to him, it felt more like _living_ than he had experienced in a long time. It was loud, and people were always coming and going at the rate of knots in the tower, and somehow he’d gone from no family to almost too much to keep up with. He had two dads (that’s two more than he’d ever had), eight uncles and aunts (that’s eight more than he’d ever had), five cousins (all from the same two parents- who even had that many kids nowadays?) and a little sister. Who was currently very loudly and emphatically complaining that she did _not_ want to go to bed.

“It’s not even late!”

“You have to get up early tomorrow for physio with Uncle Bruce-” Steve was losing this battle rather spectacularly.

“But you _promised_ we’d watch a movie!”

“Nina, kid, we _did_ watch a movie,” Bucky gestured to the screen where the credits of _Aladdin_ were currently rolling. It was a great film. Nina’s lower lip was wobbling and Matt could sense crocodile tears coming on, so he held out his arms wide and she shuffled across the sofa and into his lap. She’d had quite the growth spurt, apparently, because her N.I.N.A legs kept malfunctioning, and Tony had to take them in for repairs.

She was sniffling against his shirt, and Matt had a sneaking suspicion that there would be a rather large wet patch on his shoulder when she pulled away.

“It’s not fair,” she whined, though her words were muffled by his clothing and the sentence broken up by desperate gasps which could have been an attempt to stop the tears, or bring them on, Matt couldn’t quite tell.

“I know,” he said sympathetically as he rocked her back and forth. He looked at the rather large, empty bowls of ice cream on the coffee table. Maybe that much ice cream had been a bad idea. “It’s just _the worst,_ right?” He felt Nina nod against him.

“But you know what?” He whispered conspiratorially, and in a moment he had Nina hanging off his every word. She didn’t even notice as he stood, carrying her slowly but surely to her wheelchair.

“What?”

“I have another story for you, Little Bird-”

“Tell me tell me tell me!”

Nina had been captivated by the traditional stories Matt had begun to tell her, just as he had been at her age when his mother told him the stories of their people. He’d almost exhausted his supply of tales- but Nina, thankfully, loved hearing the repeats just as much.

“Only,” he bargained, sliding her down his side and into her chair, “if you win the race.”

“What race?”

“Who can get ready for bed first?”

“Me, me, I can!” Nina cried, and she was off like a shot. It was a tactic he’d learned early on in the care system, when the littler ones had refused to listen to anyone but the older kids. That had been fun at first, and then the older ones had realised they could use their power for good, and that had been better.

“Damn genius,” Bucky complimented from his position on the couch next to Steve, but he didn’t have time to respond before Nina was screeching his name, proclaiming that she was most definitely winning. If he wasn’t fast, the rouse wouldn’t work for much longer.

 

Matt had been here two weeks. Two weeks, in the grand scheme of things, was close enough to nothing- but it was long enough for the Avengers’ tower to start to feel like home for Matt.

“I’m back!” He called out, kicking off his shoes, (new ones which Pepper had bought him when they went shopping- he was a little bit obsessed) and hanging up his mac next to Nina’s lady bird one. He only had to wait a second before there was a clamour of greetings from inside the apartment- probably the kitchen, by the distance of the voices and the fact that he couldn’t see anyone. He dropped his school bag by the sofa, and practically slid into the kitchen. Bucky and Steve kept their home immaculately, which had led to the _brilliant_ discovery he and Nina had made: polished floors plus thick socks equalled _great_ floor-skating. He hopped into his seat next to Nina, and just about managed to catch the apple Bucky threw at him.

“How was school?” Nina asked, not really paying attention as she coloured in Mulan in her Disney princesses colouring book.

“I got ninety-eight in that World History test,” he said around a mouthful of apple, and a little crease formed between Nina’s eyebrows as she frowned.

“The one you were scared about?”

“Yup.”

“So there was nothing to be scared about,” Nina shrugged, and turned back to her drawing. Five year old logic.

“Well that just ain’t good enough,” Bucky teased, tutting at Matt. “What happened to the other two marks?”

“C’mon, man, really?” Matt laughed, and Steve rolled his eyes.

“Ignore him- you did great, son.” The affectionate tone was enough to bowl Matt over (no, he still wasn’t used to that) but it was the term of endearment that made his jaw drop. Logically, he knew Steve was old fashioned, he called waitresses _ma’am_ still whenever they went out to eat, and _son_ really wasn’t that much different, he probably used that for everyone- but it _felt_ different.

“I- what?”

Only then did Steve seem to realise what he’d said, and he winced, looking more than a little guilty. Bucky was quietly trying to distract Nina so they could have their moment.

“Sorry, too much?” Steve asked, and Matt couldn’t bring himself to talk, so he swallowed the lump in his throat and gave Steve a watery smile as he shook his head. Steve’s entire body moved as he let out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding.

“We cool now?” Nina asked loudly, looking between her dad and her brother, and Matt laughed.

“Yeah, we’re cool.”

He missed the smiles that Bucky and Steve gave each other- brighter than the stars in the sky.

 

Matt had been living at the Avengers’ tower for seventeen days, which felt like a lifetime to him, but was apparently still very new for everyone else. Namely, Ned. Alright- only Ned.

 “Is it kinda weird watching your dad on video?”

They’re sat in the gym, watching yet another one of the government mandated Captain America videos. Unfortunately, for Ned, he was not as quiet as he thought. MJ sighs deep through the nose and Peter face palms as Cassidy Walters turns around with wide eyes.

“Your dad is Captain America?” She squawks, because Cassidy is the kind of person that only has one volume setting, and the entire class turns to stare at Matt. The teacher looks up in a vaguely interested way.

“He’s not my dad,” Matt mumbles, and he can feel his face turning red.

“Then why did Ned say he is?”

Everyone watches as Matt shoots Ned a death glare and rubs a hand over his face. He has two options: call Ned a liar and lose a friendship because of the merciless bullying that will follow, or tell the truth and break the promise he made to Steve about keeping identities quiet way back when he first moved in.

“It’s an in joke,” MJ says in her usual disinterested tone, and people finally look away from Matt. “One of Matt’s foster dads looks like Captain America, haha, funny joke, friends do that, end of story.”

There are a lot of huffs that seem to mean _well that was anti-climactic,_ and everyone quickly loses interest and turns back to look at the screen. Matt mouths _thank you_ at MJ, who shrugs as if she didn’t just save his ass. Ned is tapping on his shoulder and mouthing _I’m so sorry_ over and over, and Matt just nods.

The minute of peace is quickly disrupted when Dale Hodges mutters to Henry Richards next to him _I’d rather live in a home than with a pair of faggots._

“What did you just say?” Matt doesn’t even realise that the words left his mouth until Dale is looking back at him.

“I _said_ I wouldn’t live with a pair of homos if you paid me-”

Matt wasn’t quite sure how he reached Dale, or how he managed to hit him so hard, but the next thing he knew Dale was sporting a split lip, with blood dribbling down his chin. MJ was frowning, not like she disapproved but like she knew he was going to get in a helluva lot of trouble, and Peter and Ned were sporting wide-eyed expressions of shock. As if Peter had never punched anyone in his life.

“Jones! Principal’s office! Now!” Coach Wilson barked, and was already marching his way over to the phone at the back of the gym to call ahead and let the principal’s secretary know that Matt was being sent there, and for what reasons.

“Don’t talk shit about my family,” Matt threatened in a low voice, and Dale just snarled back. Matt grinned evilly, and his eyes flashed as he rubbed the pendant that hangs low on a leather string around his neck, and muttered some gibberish when he passed Dale. The other boy looked like he was about to shit himself.

 _White people,_ his mama had told him once when he’d come home with yet another bruise, _are terrified of our magic._

 _Mama I don’t know any magic,_ he’d said, and she’d smiled real wide, and let him in on a secret that would save his ass more times than he could count.

_But they don’t know that._

He’s sat outside the principal’s office for what feels like eons. He is so glad that there isn’t one of those videos of Steve going “so you’ve found yourself outside the principal’s office”.

Matt lets his head drop back against the wall, and pulls out the pendant around his neck. It’s a tiny wooden carving, barely half the size of his pinky finger, of a wolf. _A wolf for a son of the Wolf People,_ he can hear his mom’s voice like she’s sitting right next to him. If he closes his eyes, he can see her- though the colours of the stones in her rings are too bright, and there’s not a hair out of place, and that’s how he knows it’s not real.

“You can go in now, Mr Jones,” the secretary says in the uppity way that secretary’s seem to have, and Matt tucks the pendant beneath his shirt before walking into the principal’s office.

“Have a seat, Wematin,” Principal Morita says, and Matt has to stop himself from staring too long. It’s no secret that Principal Morita is a descendent of _the_ Jim Morita, they look exactly the same- Matt has spent enough time looking in history books to know, but it still shocks him a little every time.

“It’s not usually like you to start fights,” he starts, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. Matt just shrugs.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” The principal says, in a way that means _you are going to tell me what happened._

“You still gonna call home if I do?” Matt challenges, though he knows it’s useless. Bucky and Steve are going to get called in, they’ll give him the whole _I’m not angry, I’m disappointed in you_ speech, and then he’ll get the _I’m just not sure if you’re right for this family_ speech, and he’ll be sent back to foster care.

Not that he knows from experience. Sally, who was a good five years older than he was, said that’s what happened to her.

Maybe he could just live on the streets, instead of going back to Irvine. Maybe MJ would let him crash on her couch. 

“I’m afraid I’ll have to. Injuring another student is incredibly serious. But,” and Morita makes sure to emphasise that there is a _but,_ “I’d like to hear your side of the story too.”

Matt chews on his words a little before he decides what to say.

“I, er, I moved to a new foster home recently,” he begins, and the principal looks down at what Matt presumes is his file before nodding. “And, uh, my foster parents are gay.”

“Alright,” Morita says, like he’s only half listening to Matt. He’s frowning at something in his file- if Matt squints, he can see Bucky and Steve’s names, and the address. Maybe that’s it- why would a kid like him get fostered by people who live in such a fancy area?

“Dale Hodges decided to voice his homophobic opinions and called my foster parent’s faggots.”

 Principal Morita looks up so fast Matt is scared that he might snap a tendon.

“I understand.” Morita’s neutral tone does not match his body language in the slightest. He pauses for an uncomfortably long amount of time, seemingly trying to decide what to say.

“You will be in detention, still, for assaulting another student, and I will be calling your foster parents,” he pauses again like he expects a protest from Matt, but gets nothing.

“But Dale Hodges’ parents will also be called, and he will be punished accordingly. Intolerance will not be tolerated.” Matt thought it sounded like a speech that was trying to be objective and was failing miserably.

“Can I go back to class?”

“You are dismissed, but I will see you after school, here in my office, and I shall be calling your parents.”

“Thank you, sir,” Matt replied before he left, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

He slunk into his seat in front of Ned in Spanish, to find a note on his desk in Ned’s unmistakable scrawl.

_I’m sorry I got you in trouble._

He quickly wrote a note back.

_You weren’t the one that punched him._

The rest of the day dragged on painstakingly slowly as Matt waited for the final bell to go. Would both Bucky and Steve turn up? What if they were on a mission, would a Shield agent appear? Would it be Teddy? What about Nina, who would pick her up from school? He really hadn’t considered how much of an inconvenience he was being when he punched Dale.

He trudged to the Principal’s office in a mood that could rival Nina’s if he amped it up a bit, and sat in the chair he had that morning. He belatedly realised that he’d sat himself in the middle; another chair had been brought in- so now he would be subject to shaking-heads-of-disappointment from all angles, but he was too awkward to move.

“Your fathers will be here in a minute, they said they got stuck in traffic.”

It was still odd hearing Bucky and Steve being referred to as ‘his fathers’. He didn’t let himself dwell on whether it was a good kind of odd, because they probably wouldn’t be for much longer.

“Both of them?” Matt did not appreciate the way his voice squeaked. That meant they’d gotten someone to look after Nina and drop her home just because of his _delinquency_. It was probably either Lindsey and Michael, who were too old for this, or Makayla who already had enough on her plate. Or Nina had had to go to after school club- her school was so tiny, did they even have an after school club? He felt even guiltier than before.

Principal Morita didn’t have time to reply as there was a knock on the door, and Bucky and Steve were let into the room. From his seat, the two of them looked larger than life as they separated to stand on either side of him. He sunk further down into his chair.

“You must be Matt’s parents,” Morita said, reaching out a hand for Steve to shake, and then Bucky, “I’m-”

“Morita?” Steve asked, with wide eyes, as he slowly took his seat. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. Matt supposed it was as close as he would get to it. Bucky and Steve gave each other a _look_ over the top of Matt’s head.

“Errr… yes, I’m Principal Morita- you must be…” He trailed off, waiting for either Steve or Bucky to introduce themselves. He looked like he was on the cusp of recognising who they were.

“Mr James Barnes,” Bucky said, placing his hand on his chest and giving Morita a famously charming smile. Matt noticed he’d put the flesh sleeve on.

“Grant is Mr Rogers.”

Matt tried not to let his surprise show on his face- of course they go by _slightly_ different names to throw people off. The principal was studying their faces with the same apprehensive intrigue that they were studying him with. It was an odd stand-off to be at the centre of.

“Well, um, yes so I called you in today to talk about an incident that happened in Wematin’s gym class.” Morita finally comes to his senses, and Matt just sinks further into his seat as Bucky raises an eyebrow and Steve gives him a side long glance.

“One of the other students, Dale Hodges, made a homophobic comment about your family, I’m sorry to inform you, and rather than reporting the incident, Wematin punched him- quite hard.”

Bucky and Steve don’t even seem a little bit phased.

“So Wematin will be serving detention for hurting another student, I suppose?” Steve asks calmly, as if he’s been here before. Matt suddenly remembers a quote from a history book- _Rogers was famously rash in his decision making, often insisting on settling matters with physical fights, even pre-serum._ Principal Morita blinks twice and frowns, stuttering through a _well, yes_ but Bucky interrupts him.

“And I’m sure the school has a _no intolerance_ policy, so I assume this Hodges kid will also be serving in detention or have some other suitable punishment?” Bucky’s Brooklyn drawl is thick, and his charming demeanour has become stoic in a matter of moments, which is disarming enough in itself. The entire situation has the principal panicking slightly because really he’s not used to parents being so calm when it comes to their child getting into fights. There’s crying and screaming at this point, usually, and not from the child in question.

“I can assure you that Mr Hodges will be punished for such misconduct-”

“Then I suppose this meeting has reached its conclusion and we are free to take Wematin home?” Steve asks as he’s rising out of his seat. Bucky places a hand on Wematin’s shoulder, squeezing it lightly to tell him to do the same.

“But Mr Rogers-” the principal starts, and Steve pauses as he untwists the straps of Matt’s backpack on his shoulders. Bucky still has a hand on Matt’s shoulder.

“Sorry, Principal Morita, did you have something to say? It’s just we have to go and collect our daughter from… her aunt.” Steve is as polite as you’d expect Captain America to be. Not that Morita knows he is Captain America. Probably.

It’s only then that Matt notices the framed photo of the Howling Commandos, complete with Bucky and Steve, framed on the wall. How did he miss that?

Morita looks incredibly flustered.

“Just, er, don’t do it again, Wematin.” Matt supposes he’s recognised Steve and Bucky by now- if he hadn’t, then Matt was giving him a lot more credit than he deserved.

Matt just nods in response to the warning, as does Bucky.

“Thank you for your time, Principal, hopefully the next time we meet it will be under better circumstances,” Bucky flashes the principal a winning smile, he’s back to charming again, and Morita looks like his head might explode as the three of them walk out of the office. Dale Hodges is sat between his parents in the waiting area, and his jaw drops when he sees Steve and Bucky. Bucky gives him a once over, and Dale looks like his eyes might pop out of his head.

“That’s Hodges?” Bucky asks Matt loud enough for the other family to hear, even though it quite obviously is Dale because of where he’s sat, who he’s sat with, and the fact that he’s got a bruised jaw and a busted lip. Matt lets out a quite _yep_.

“Alright then,” Bucky says, and Matt thinks Dale might actually faint.

Nothing is said the whole way back to the car, and Matt tries to ignore the looks he’s getting, being escorted out of school flanked by Bucky and Steve. Peter and Ned are nowhere to be seen, but MJ calls out _see you tomorrow!_

Matt sits in the back of the car, with Bucky in the driver’s seat and Steve riding shot gun. No one says anything for forty two seconds (yes he’s counting).

“Morita is related to Jim Morita, right?” Steve says, looking at Matt in the mirror.

“Yeah, he’s his grandson.” Matt’s voice is barely there- he’s thinking too hard about his impending doom to be focused on this benign conversation.

“Small world,” Bucky comments, and they all go quiet again, until Matt can’t take it anymore.

“You haven’t even done the _I’m disappointed with you_ face! Are we skipping straight to the _sorry, we’re sending you back now_ talk? Because can we stop with the waiting and just get it over and done with?” His outburst is very loud in the tiny space of the car- seventeen days’ worth of quashed anxiety is apparently very loud.

Steve tenses a little. Bucky fully turns to look at him.

“What are you talking about?” He sounds as bewildered as Matt feels.

“Usually when kids act up like this, they get sent back because families don’t wanna deal with their bullshit.”

“Matt, son, you gotta breathe,” Steve gently reminds him, and Matt thinks he must have a really obvious _I’m internally panicking_ face. Steve counts to seven, and then eleven, a couple of times over to help Matt regulate his breathing. _He called you son;_ the sensible part of Matt’s brain reminds him. _That’s gotta be good, right?_

 _He could also be setting you up for a fall- trying to let you down gently._  

“Matt, we’re not sending you back,” Bucky says softly, interrupting Matt’s raging and conflicting internal monologue. Steve nods in agreement. “You wanna leave, fine by us, that was the agreement we made at the beginning, remember? But we’re _never_ sending you back, okay? That’s how this works. You’re with us now, even if it doesn’t feel like home yet-”

“That’s it though,” Matt says quietly before he can even stop himself. He bites his lip so hard he’s sure it might bleed as he finds the courage to continue. Neither Bucky nor Steve seems to be breathing as they wait for him to talk.

“It feels just like home.”

Steve gives him a watery smile, and Bucky pats his knee as if to say _same for us._ Matt might cry in front of them if he doesn’t change the topic right now.

“Aren’t you gonna ground me or something?” He asks, and he’s half hoping for a laugh, but Bucky and Steve seem to have some sort of conversation just by looking at each other instead.

“Punching people because you don’t agree with them is bad-” Steve says, and he sounds unsure of himself.

“You’re a hypocrite, Steve,” Matt deadpans, and Bucky mutters something that sounds like _told you so._ Matt’s glad his foster parents can settle their disputes in non-petty ways, like grown-ups.

“Give me a _break,”_ Steve grouches as Bucky starts the car. “I am certified to punch people I don’t agree with, for good reason, that’s my job, _you_ on the other hand, are not. I am touched that you felt the need to defend us, but was it _really_ worth it, getting into-”

“Alright, alright, I won’t do it again!” Matt throws his hands up in surrender once he’s buckled himself in. Everything is quiet for a minute.

“So… am I in trouble?”

“Not today, pal.” Steve gives him a gentle smile, and Matt can feel the residual tension leaving his body.

“Nah, punishment enough is having to watch those god-awful videos of Steve,” Bucky teases. “So you’ve found yourself in detention-” Steve shoves him lightly and actually _growls._ Bucky just cackles harder at that- but Matt has to give it to him, Bucky’s impression of Steve is absolutely stellar.

 

Matt’s been living at the Avenger’s tower for twenty six days when he wakes up in cold sweats from a nightmare. It’s been four nights since Bucky recovered from his episode- it was bad. Bad enough that Matt and Nina had to stay with Natasha for two days. Bad enough that Matt had had to stand in front of Nina so she couldn’t see Bucky’s rage- only hear as he smashed a vase.

Irvine’s voice is still ringing in his ears, and Beth’s cruel smile is clear in his minds eye, as he stumbles out of his room to the kitchen.

_I’ll have to take them away- Bucky and Steve are clearly not good enough to be parents._

“She’s gone,” he mutters quietly to himself as he fills a glass with cold water. “They put her away she’s gone.”

“Matt?”

Bucky has a book open in his lap, and he’s curled up in his favourite arm chair. Matt wants to apologise, say _I’m sorry I woke you,_ but that wouldn’t be right at all.

“I- I- fuck, sorry, Bucky, I-”

“It’s alright,” Bucky says calmly, and he absentmindedly folds the corner of the page of his book before shutting it and placing it on the coffee table. He shifts over to the sofa, and pats the space next to him. Matt moves on autopilot and does as he’s told.

“Nightmares?” Bucky asks quietly, and Matt can’t bring himself to speak.

“If you want to talk about it we can,” Bucky says kindly, and he’s looking at Matt with such warmth that it’s easy to believe that he’s not plagued by his own terrors, when Matt knows that’s a million miles from the truth. Sometimes, you want your parents to be unbeatable, unbreakable, so they can deal with your horrors. Selfishly, Matt allows himself to believe it for now.

“They were going to take me and Nina away from you,” he whispers, curling in on himself, and Bucky frowns.

“Who?”

“Irvine,” Matt manages to croak out. “Beth.”

Matt draws up his knees and buries his face in his arms as Bucky calls his name. It’s a stupid nightmare to have, completely unlikely and _trivial_ compared to what Bucky had to deal with.

“Matt,” Bucky calls out again, taking Matt’s hands in his singular flesh hand to get him to look up. As soon as he does, Bucky moves his hand to cup Matt’s face, like he did with Nina when she was upset.

“We will _never_ let that happen, you hear me? We will never let anyone take you from us.”

Even when he was alone, Bucky was always part of a pair with Steve. _We. Us._

Matt didn’t know what possessed him to do so, but he flung himself at Bucky, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in the crook of his neck. Bucky only hesitated for a moment before circling his arm around Matt and rubbing his hand soothingly over his spine.

“I’ve got you, buddy, don’t you worry.” Matt could feel the reverberations of his voice, and allowed himself to breathe in deeply. When Bucky’s hand went to his hair, Matt froze. Bucky must have noticed, because he immediately moved his hand back to its spot between Matt’s shoulder blades.

“I hate it,” Matt admitted, allowing his words to be muffled by Bucky’s skin.

“Hate what?”

“My hair,” he whispers, and Bucky pulls away slightly to look at him. Matt looks down and focuses on the pendant resting on his chest, rising and falling as he breathed deeply.

“It’s beautiful-” Bucky says, but in his attempt to placate Matt, he’s completely missed the point.

“It reminds me of _her,”_ Matt spits with venom he didn’t know he had. Bucky nods.

“Ah.”

Matt looks up at Bucky and swallows hard, trying to sum up all the bravery he has. Bucky does not look away from his gaze even once.

“Will you cut it?”

Bucky just blinks at him. Matt is breathing rather hard and his hand is squeezing around the wolf pendant that he always wears. Bucky doesn’t really know what to say- he and Steve had done some reading on Mohegan tradition, when Matt had just moved in, and cutting his hair was the last thing he would have expected Matt to ask. His hair was sacred- it would be like, well, cutting off a limb-that would be an apt analogy for someone like him.

“Only if you want,” Bucky says evenly, and Matt seems to sag, though Bucky isn’t sure if it’s with relief or sadness.

“I,” Matt starts, but his mouth doesn’t seem to be able to form whatever he wants to say next. “I hate it,” he repeats quietly, and Bucky is pretty sure he feels a heart string snap. “It’s just- I can’t, I can’t- I don’t want it gone but just not, not-”

“Not like this?” Bucky asks quietly, and Matt just lets his chin drop to his chest.

“I’ll get the scissors.”

Matt does as Bucky says, and takes a seat at the kitchen table, and lets Bucky drape towels across his chest and around his shoulders. Matt’s clenches his fists as tight as he can, but it doesn’t hide the fact that his hands are shaking, and slightly more transparent than the rest of him.

“Hey,” Bucky says softly, crouching in front of Matt, placing his hands on his hands. He’d had to go and put the metal one on.

“You don’t have to do this; you don’t have to cut your hair, even if five seconds ago you wanted to.” Matt swallows, and Bucky can see his eyes are welling up with tears.   
“I wanna make it very clear to you- you never have to do anything you don’t want to, okay?” It’s a conversation he’s had with Nina time and time again, but by the look on Matt’s face, it’s been far too long since he was told something similar. He’s a smart boy, logically he would know that- but it’s very different being told- especially by someone you trust.

“Okay,” Matt whispers, pulling his hands from Bucky’s to rub his face. He takes a shuddering breath, and then scrunches up his nose. “I don’t want to look like this anymore.” He’s got such determination in his eyes; it ignites a sense of pride in Bucky.

“I’m only going to cut it so the long sections are the same length as the shorter ones, okay?”

“Alright.”

“That’s about five inches below your collar bone,” he tells Matt, and gently pokes a finger in the centre of his back so he can feel how long his hair is going to be.

“Would you talk to me?”

“What about?” Bucky asks as he runs a brush through Matt’s hair.

“Anything, absolutely anything.” Bucky hears Matt’s breath hitch as he cuts off the first lock of hair, so he says the first thing that pops into his head.

“Did you know Steve couldn’t drive before he got to the army?”

“What?”

“Well, back then Steve’s eyesight was way too bad, so I was always chauffeur- and when he got to the army and pulled that rescue mission to come and save me, everyone just assumed he could drive, but he’d only kind learned by observing- it was absolute madness. I still can’t believe they just thought he could function as soon as they made him into a beefcake- he was still just as much of an punk as he was when he was skinny.”

Matt’s shoulders were shaking as he tried to muffle his laugh- Bucky couldn’t help but think _mission accomplished._

Bucky made quick work of finishing up, and kept chatting away to Matt as he swept the floors. It was only when Matt was taking off the towels that he remembered something he’d read.

“Do you want to keep the hair- is there a ritual we need to perform?” Matt froze, and he looked down ashamed. Bucky felt another heart string go.

“Probably is, but I wouldn’t know it,” Matt says quietly, and Bucky has the strong urge to hug him close- but there seemed to be an unspoken rule with Matt that hugs were only for him to instigate.

“What would you like to do with it?”

Bucky couldn’t help the slight swelling of anger that happened when he looked at Matt’s shocked face, like the kid had forgotten what it was like to have an agency over his body in anyway.

“Just get rid of it.”

Bucky does just that, and tells Matt to go to bed if he wants. Matt shakes his head, though his yawn is rather contradictory, and curls up on the sofa again. Once Bucky’s finished clearing up, he joins Matt, and he tries to hide his surprise when Matt curls back up into his side. They don’t say anything for a while, though Matt’s gaze is intently flitting across the bookcase.

“You put up pictures of me.”

Bucky can’t tell if it’s a statement or a question, and when he looks down, Matt is fighting to keep his eyes open.

“Course we did, bud, we’re family.”

There are photos of Matt and Nina all over the place, in the natural history museum, the park, and Tony’s lab- there’s even the selfie that he and Nina took in for show and tell framed and hung on the wall. There are photos of their whole family, in different combinations, but Bucky’s favourite has to be the one that Michael took of the four of them and Lindsey when they went over to hers for tea.

When Bucky looks down again, Matt is fast asleep.

He carefully stands, and picks up Matt like he’s cradling him so that he doesn’t wake him. Matt sighs contentedly as Bucky tucks him into his own bed, and Bucky almost misses it as he heads for the door.

“Night Pa,” Matt slurs in his sleep, and Bucky’s breath hitches.

When he climbs back into bed, Steve is half awake.

“Is everything okay?” His voice is thick with sleep, but he’s alert and looking at Bucky, who can’t stop grinning.

“Peachy perfect,” Bucky whispers back, kissing Steve soundly. He’ll explain in the morning.


End file.
